The Origin of Storms
by Sike Saner
Summary: Esaax the wobbuffet has not been the same since the death of his trainer. He may never be the same again.
1. The Haven

**DISCLAIMER: **I do not own Pokémon.

**CONTENT ADVISORY: **Rated M for violence and gore. Also contains some mild language.

* * *

**Chapter 1 – The Haven**

_He lay down upon a cold, wet patch of grass, though it may as well have been a bed fit for a queen. It was soft and enveloping, like the sudden drowse that was pleasantly consuming him. He yawned, covering his mouth with his hand—_her _hand, pale-skinned and branching out into five separate fingers._

_This was not his hand. This was not his point of view._

_Something sky-blue appeared over the pale hand—his own, much simpler, fused hand, surrounded by a soft, multicolored glow. He looked into her eyes, though he knew he didn't have to do so. He knew that they were closed, that their owner slept. He felt a sense of being asleep, too, yet remained awake. After all, it was only _her _sleep, which he happened to be experiencing vicariously, not his own. A second-hand sensation._

_Her last._

_He recoiled from the sudden, stark vacuum where her lifeforce had been and from the pain around the edges of the part of him that had been erased with the entirety of her being. Disarray exploded in his mind—his cumbersome nervous system had not unsynched in time, and now he couldn't tell for certain whether he was living or dead, whether he was himself or the lifeless figure lying before him. Overwhelmed by these sensations, he staggered backward until something caught under one of his pods and nearly tripped him._

_His perception, all of his many senses, abruptly froze. For a moment, reality returned. Then he saw the object on which he had just stepped—something round in shape, red and white in color—and the distinction between him and the one whom he'd just lost was at last entirely swallowed by chaos, for this pokéball was his—but also _hers_…_

_The pokéball rattled as it was lifted up in his shaking hands. The vestigial joints at his knuckles constricted around it, and with a final, caterwauling scream tearing its way through his throat, his psyche shattered as the pokéball he clutched did likewise…_

- o -

The harsh sound of the pokéball's implosion blasted him once again out of his brain's unique perversion of the sleeping mind: two dreams, two perspectives, experienced at the same time.

But now, as he reminded himself, they truly were only dreams, no matter how twisted, and nothing more. The pain was not really present, just a shadow of the feeling that was somewhere between remembered and imagined, and it was now confined to those dreams. It no longer besieged his conscious mind, no longer burned and frayed his nerves.

Peace had been hard-won, however, through the efforts of many over years in the Haven. Lazily, still yet to fully awaken, his eyes opened and their inner membranes slid back to reveal a final view of his room there. It was a simple, small space, shut away from the outside world and its rude sun, perpetually shadowed in his preferred darkness. He flexed his spine and his limbs and detached his jaws in a massive yawn. There was a series of faint snaps as his joints relocated, followed by another sound: the trilling of the door alarm.

As he got to his feet, he saw light blossom gradually in the space around him, a feature of the room for which he was quite grateful. It allowed eyes like his, accustomed to near-total darkness, to more gracefully adjust to the illumination on the other side of the door, which would not open until the light-adjustment process was finished.

He would have personally preferred for the lights to not come on at all, and perhaps they wouldn't have to save for the fact that the Haven's staff were almost exclusively chansey. Their kind did not possess anything like the night-vision of his own and thus required light to be active and able to perform their sometimes critical work (though he'd often wondered why they didn't just employ some nocturnal species to tend to the dark-sighted).

At any rate, he was able to tolerate light to a degree, for he was used to it. Living with humans (and the hours that those humans kept) for part of his life had caused him to develop diurnal habits.

He suspected that he'd probably end up half-blind before his first century and wholly so halfway through his second, but it would be worth it in his opinion. He had loved those years that he'd spent with humans, and outside of the occasional nightmare, he could now recall them with more joy than sorrow.

The door slid open, and in stepped a chansey. A nametag clipped to her fur identified her as Teresa, at which Esaax smiled; she was his favorite among the staff at the Haven. She carried a form attached to a clipboard; beaming proudly, she turned it around so that the paper faced him.

_Wobbuffet, male,_ the paper read in unown-script. _Designation: Esaax Evergray._ He'd been denying that name and the history that came with it ever since his new life among the humans had begun, but now, in his "second new life", he embraced it once more.

After all, once one gets over a thing like a spontaneous extinction, a little adolescent heartbreak is nothing…

He shook his head clear of such thoughts, determined to stay in the present, and returned his attention to the form. His eyes scanned its surface quickly, skimming over several more lines of personal data until he found he was looking for: _4/15/14…_

"Well, this is it!" Teresa said cheerfully, matching Esaax's thoughts at the moment almost word-for-word. Today, he would leave. Today, at last, he _could_. "Are you ready for your final tests?" the chansey asked.

"Yes, ma'am," Esaax answered, careful as always to prevent the automatic door from closing on his tail as he followed the chansey out of the room.

"Now, you do realize this means you'll have to go see Adn just one last time."

"I'm not scared of Adn," the wobbuffet said, and for the most part he wasn't. Nonetheless, his tone did suggest some sort of dread.

"Never said you were, but still, I know his method isn't the most comfortable…"

"…But it's what it takes and you're gonna do it anyway, so…" Esaax shrugged in mock surrender.

"Right. Anyway," Teresa said as she led Esaax down the hall, "we'll be saving him for last, which is fine since we have other things to take care of anyway. We'll just get you in when he's finished; he's with another patient at the moment."

"Is he, now."

"Yes, a relicanth."

"Ouch."

"Oh yes, he's been at it for three days. But he is almost done with him; I made sure."

Another door opened to admit the two of them. Therein were all the necessary resources for a basic physical exam, including a living resource, a pokémon who served as Teresa's assistant—or, more precisely, as her hands. Specifically, this was a mr. mime by the name of Madeline. Her large and agile hands were well-suited for tools and equipment made for the very similar hands of humans, the sort of things for which the tiny, nearly-featureless paws of a chansey tended to be inadequate.

"Why, look at you!" Madeline said. "We don't really need to look him over, do we, Terry? He's the very incarnation of health right here, I'd say."

She came up to stand before him and studied him with an eyebrow raised and a finger resting on her lips in a way that one might gaze at a work of art. Then she smiled and said, "Still working out, I see. Bet we'll fill this place twice over after you get out with all the women you'll drive crazy, you handsome blue devil."

Flirting and teasing from Madeline—_that_ wasn't new. She hadn't given him a break in that department even once since soon after she'd first met him. Esaax sincerely hoped that she was just joking around, but if she _wasn't_… Esaax tried very, very hard not to think about that possibility.

At any rate, her observation was correct—or the part about him working out was, anyway. Esaax had indeed been on a devout physical training regimen for quite some time now. Though Madeline liked to make him out to be some kind of beefcake, such was not the case at all. The effects of his training, though visible, were not dramatic. Esaax was no bodybuilder; the point of his training was simply to help him harness and become aware of strength that he already possessed.

The idea to start him on such a program had originally arisen from the pokéball incident—that _had_ actually happened, not just in his dreams. As was common among his kind, Esaax hadn't known the full magnitude of his own physical strength on account of not really being able to bring it to bear against another living creature; as such, it had been suggested to Esaax that it might do him good to become conscious of his "idle power" lest anything else fall victim to it.

He'd agreed to this instantly. All his life, he'd broken things by accident; the chance to learn how to leave his klutzy side in the past was irresistible to him. Soon after he'd begun this training, he'd discovered that the exercise also had the benefit of keeping his mind as well as his body busy and strong and had thus come to appreciate it all the more.

While he no longer needed it in the therapeutic sense, he still enjoyed it as a hobby. He'd often wondered where he might train once he was released and had ultimately decided on the old human gym down the street, which fighting-types frequented.

He imagined that if he did go there, some machamp or maybe a hitmon of some kind would likely pick a fight with him—he figured that they'd be unable to resist the allure of a psychic that they could whale on without fear of eating psybeam. One or another of them would just let loose with the mega punches and seismic tosses, only to have those attacks thrown right back in their face, doubled in power…

The thought of such a thing was just too funny to Esaax. He might never have stopped laughing if his internal comedy weren't interrupted then by something cold attaching itself to his chest. He looked at the stethoscope for a moment, and then his gaze traveled up to meet that of the mr. mime who'd put it there.

"Aw, come on, Teresa. That's just _lazy_," Esaax said, though he did so lightheartedly. "You've never had to have her do this part before."

"She insisted," said the chansey.

Madeline just stood there with a smile that suggested that she had far more on her mind than anything Esaax's heart was doing.

"In fact," Teresa went on, "Madeline asked if she could handle the entire examination herself. And I told her she could."

Esaax could do nothing but groan.

- o -

Minutes later, Esaax left the room alongside Teresa, who was failing miserably to stifle her laughter.

"I'm sorry," she said between giggles, half-breathless and on the verge of tears, "but you should have seen your face!"

Esaax just scowled, his face flushed in the deep blue shade of his humiliation.

"She just wanted to give you something to remember her by, that's all," Teresa said.

"How very thoughtful of her." Esaax's voice hinted at a desire to vomit. "So now what?"

"Well, you could have your retaliatory empathy test now, or would you rather have something to eat first?"

"Heh. That is _such_ a ridiculous question."

"I know," Teresa said with a chuckle.

The two stopped in their tracks as another chansey stepped into their path from around the corner. "He's here," the newcomer said.

"Oh good," Teresa responded. "Tell him to wait in the cafeteria, okay?" She turned to Esaax. "I forgot to tell you, Esaax. A friend of yours has come to pick you up. You can chat with him over breakfast."

"A friend? Who?" Esaax asked.

"Go and find out for yourself! I'm going to check up on Adn again and see if he's anywhere near ready. See you later!"

Esaax watched Teresa waddle off, then made his way to the cafeteria, feeling awfully puzzled for someone who was supposed to have achieved clarity at last.


	2. Just a Little Favor

**Chapter 2 – Just a Little Favor**

With a large amount of food in tow, Esaax scanned the cafeteria for the mystery visitor but found no sign of him. So he opted to stop at a table, set his tray down, and let this "friend" come to him.

It wasn't long before his eyes picked out an arbok who was just making his entrance. The arbok spotted Esaax in the same instant and rushed to greet him without hesitation, failing to notice both the skiploom whom he ran over in the process and the sound of her cursing him out in her squeaky voice immediately afterward.

"Syr? What in the world are you doing way out here?" Esaax rose and gave his old friend a massive hug as the arbok came to a stop beside the table. A bowl of oatmeal seemed to fall out of thin air, spilling all over Syr's chest. Esaax had been balancing it on his head and had forgotten about it. "Oops…"

"That's okay," Syr said through gritted teeth, shaking off the hot oatmeal (which thankfully didn't land on anyone else).

"Oh man, I haven't seen you in _years_," Esaax said before taking his seat once more and then devouring an entire watmel berry in one bite. "Thought I'd never see you again—what are you even doing all the way out here?" he asked again.

"I live here now," the arbok replied. "I found a pretty decent place. In fact, you can stay there for a while if you'd like. Would you?"

"Don't really have anywhere else to go, so yeah, sure. Hey, I'll even move in with you. Wouldn't want you to be all alone, after all…"

"But I'm not alone. I adopted a son."

Esaax hadn't seen that one coming. He nearly choked on a brownie. "Okay… so I'm gonna be sharing a house with a giant, venomous serpent _and_ his bitey little snakeling?" he said jokingly, an eyebrow raised and a smirk on his face.

Syr gave him an odd look. "He's not a snakeling, he's a snorunt. His name is Jeneth, but we just call him Jen. And yes, he knows bite, but he doesn't just randomly use that on people."

"Snorunt? This is the wrong climate for those."

"Tell his kind that. Supposedly, a bunch of glalie decided to settle in these parts, though I can't imagine why they would've wanted to, and most of the people I know say that they've seen at least one around. I still haven't, and I hope I never do." He shuddered. "_Brrr_. I get the creeps just thinking about them…"

"Huh. So where is this Jen?"

"Waiting in the car."

"You left a _baby_ outside in a _car_?"

"He's not a baby, he's a young man," Syr said.

"Whatever. You still shouldn't have left an ice-type out there under the sun."

"He's in the shade, Esaax. It's _his_ car; he drives it, and he gets to decide where to park it."

_A snorunt driving a car. No, nothing weird about _that _image…_ Esaax decided to turn away from the topic of Jen and back to his gluttony.

"You still haven't explained how someone your size could possibly need to eat a third of his own weight every day," Syr said teasingly.

"You still haven't explained how someone _your_ size can only need to eat once a month," Esaax retorted. "But who cares? What I really wanna know about is—" Esaax saw Teresa heading their way. "Whoops, looks like we'll have to talk about it later." He shoved the remainder of his breakfast down his throat at once and waved at the chansey.

"What's going on?" Syr asked.

"Retaliatory empathy test. It's just this exercise to make sure that some of my more… uh, complicated systems are working all right. It's kind of neat—wanna watch?"

"You can do more than just watch," said a voice from beside Syr.

Syr had not bothered to look and see whom Esaax had waved at; as such, Teresa's unexpected voice nearly scared him right out of his skin. "Waaugh!" he shouted.

"Daria could seriously use a break," Teresa told Esaax, unfazed by the arbok's outburst. "You could participate in her place," she then added to Syr.

Syr gained a somewhat worried expression, still unsure of just what the chansey and wobbuffet were talking about, let alone if it was anything of which he should want to have any part.

"Please?" Esaax pleaded in his cheesiest mock-begging tone. "It'll be fun, I promise. _Please_?"

Syr sighed. "Well…"

- o -

Next thing Syr knew, they'd brought him into a very large and entirely empty room. It didn't look at all equipped for any sort of medical testing. "I still don't get it," he admitted to Teresa. "What is it that we're going to be doing here, exactly?"

"We need to make sure his retaliatory abilities are in good shape. To do this, they must be triggered. That's where you'll come in," the chansey said.

Syr was now almost certain that he knew what was being asked of him and strongly hoped that he was wrong. Reluctantly, he reached for confirmation. "Esaax, what do I have to do to trigger these… abilities?"

"Attack me."

Syr had dearly wished to be wrong about that… "Oh no, no, no, no, no. _No_. Come on, you honestly can't expect me to… I mean, seriously…" The arbok began looking frantically about for an escape route. He nearly tied himself into a knot doing so. "Please, don't make me do this. _Please_!"

Snapping Syr out of it with a good pound to his head, Teresa lowered her voice to a very serious tone for his "ears" only. "It will smart, yes. But it's crucial that we do this. It's to make sure his tail's all right. He's sustained some kind of trauma to it before, and very serious complications can arise from a tail injury in his species—and has once before, in his case. We do _not_ want him going into crisis _again_—do you know what that is?"

Syr shook his head.

"Autoempathic crisis is a vicious cycle caused by damage to a wobbuffet's tail—or more specifically, to the pseudobrain in the tail, which is the source of their ability to use retaliatory attacks," Teresa began to explain. "In crisis, the pseudobrain fails to distinguish pain with an internal cause from pain caused by an attacking enemy. It retaliates, involuntarily, by inflicting twice the pain on its source as usual—but with the source being the wobbuffet itself, it only creates a new, greater pain that it then must also counter. The cycle continues repeating, doubling the pain again and again, until the agony reaches a level that the wobbuffet's body just can't bear any longer.

"I was there when he suffered his last crisis—it was _awful_. The convulsions, the screaming… God, how he screamed…" she whispered, sounding lost in the memory for a moment. "He was almost too far gone by the time we managed to stabilize him, and the dosage of painkillers it took to break the cycle nearly killed him in and of itself."

"My God…" Syr said almost voicelessly, both amazed and alarmed. "You know… just for the record, I think the 'trauma' to his tail you mentioned was someone stepping on it," he said, not naming that someone out of respect for the dearly departed. "On more than one occasion, actually."

"Yikes," Teresa said, grimacing. "Well, anyway… the damage to his retaliatory empathy centers can never be fully repaired. He'll never be entirely out of the woods. We may be forced to… well, to remove his poor tail if it gets out of hand again. So hopefully you see why it's important that we be made aware of any continuing problems he might have—we need to be able to take care of them _before_ they get a chance to blow up in his face again. Will you help us?"

"Of course," Syr said. "Still, I don't really want to hurt him…"

"Just one acid and one bite," Teresa said. "One special attack and one physical attack so that we can gauge both responses."

"You're not testing his destiny bond?"

"Luckily for you, no."

"Okay… okay, I can do that." Syr turned toward Esaax and slithered somewhat closer to him, still nervous but knowing that he had to go through with this for Esaax's sake. He called upon his acid technique, careful as he did so to keep the corrosive fluid relatively weak so as not to hurt his friend—and by extension, himself—more than was necessary. The acid swiftly filled his mouth, and he spat it in a forceful spray toward Esaax.

Esaax was ready. His tail rose, its oculons collecting a vast spectrum of data about his opponent and any incoming attacks. Focusing hard, he opened the pathways to his retaliatory empathy centers. Doing this so consciously and deliberately was difficult for any wobbuffet, but years of practice had finally allowed him to master this ability. A bright pink aura flared around him as the acid hit its mark and seared the skin of his left arm, sending an amplified echo of the pain that the poison-type attack had caused back unto the arbok.

Syr shouted in pain and recoiled as he suffered the effects of Esaax's mirror coat, surprised by its force—it seemed that he hadn't succeeded in weakening his acid attack quite as much as he'd intended. "Sorry…" he said, at which Esaax made a dismissive gesture despite the pain that was visible in his expression.

"Very good," Teresa said to Esaax. "Now this time, try to suppress it. Hit him a little harder, Syr," she added, earning a rather uneasy look from the arbok.

This time, Esaax braced himself. His efforts to develop his abilities had enhanced them to a point where it took very little to set them off. As he took Syr's second acid attack in the other arm, he had to fight hard to suppress his body's urge to retaliate. Luckily for Syr, Esaax succeeded.

"Excellent! Syr, change attacks," Teresa commanded.

Syr lunged forward in a bite attack, his fangs taking on the violet-black glow of dark-type energy as they connected with Esaax's side—he made a very conscious effort not to let his teeth sink in too deeply, however, still intent on causing both Esaax and himself as little pain as possible. An orange flash heralded what was nonetheless a very strong counter attack dealt in response, and the arbok was sent reeling back with a scream.

"What the…" Syr's voice faltered as he struggled somewhat to pick himself back up off of the ground, panting slightly. "What was _that_ all about?" he demanded once he caught his breath, looking quite shaken.

"You just hit a psychic pokémon with a dark attack. Figure it out," Teresa replied. "Now bite him again."

Syr made a sound very much like that of a scared baby growlithe, with the puppy eyes to match.

"He'll hold that back this time. You ought to be fine," Teresa assured him.

Trembling, Syr approached the wobbuffet again, stopped in front of him, and gave one of his forearms a very weak little nibble, with a negligible amount of dark energy accompanying the attack.

"You'll have to do better than that," Esaax said.

Syr bit him harder—_barely_ harder.

"Come on, that one didn't count, either!"

"Do it, Syr," Teresa said rather sternly.

"I don't _want_ to!" Syr cried.

"_Do it_!" Teresa ordered.

"Okay, okay!" In his haste, Syr's jaws snapped shut on their target so hard that both the sound of the strike itself and the cry of pain that the bite attack elicited from Esaax echoed in the room for several seconds. The arbok quickly let go of Esaax and cringed, but there was no orange flash and no painful retaliation.

There was, however, an irregular semicircle of deep punctures around Esaax's chest and left shoulder. The wobbuffet panted as he stared, quite astonished, at the wounds. Syr stared at the damage as well, looking equally surprised and fairly apologetic.

Teresa managed to smile proudly at Esaax. "Congratulations," she said. "If your tail can resist that, it can probably resist anything." A frown swiftly found its place on her face once more as she watched the rivulets of cobalt-colored blood now trickling from Esaax's wounds. "Looks like the prize you've just won for passing your test is a healthy dose of hyper potion…"


	3. In Review

**Chapter 3 – In Review**

Esaax's wounds were cleaned and repaired, leaving only a faint series of scars where the stronger of Syr's bites had connected and nothing at all of his lesser injuries. Just as his healing was completed, he was given the message that Adn was ready for him. Esaax told Syr to find someplace comfortable to wait. Then, taking a deep, steadying breath, he stepped into Adn's office of his own accord where once he would have had to be pushed.

Behind that door stood a blue-haired gardevoir by the name of Adn, who was the Haven's psychic regression therapist. His method was to make patients relive various moments in their pasts and gauge their present states of mind by their conscious and subconscious emotional reactions to their induced recollections. Despite the marathon session that he was reported to have just endured, he still looked as far from exhaustion as one could possibly be.

As always, not a word was spoken and no signal was made as Adn and his patient took their places. The scene of the office blurred and warped, then was swiftly replaced by very different surroundings. Once again, Esaax found himself thrust into a perfectly vivid replica of a scene from his memory. Now standing in this bygone time and place like a tourist in his own past, his regression began…

- o -

_Esaax was born fifty-four years ago to the Evergray clan of the caves south of Blackthorn. His childhood was quiet and uneventful; not much changed from night to night until Esaax reached his mid-thirties. It was there and then, at the dawn of his adult life, that one evening brought something new—something that would alter the course of his life forever._

_From faraway Hoenn, a nomadic branch of a clan called the Fade somehow journeyed across the sea and into Evergray territory. The foreigners were readily welcomed and allowed to stay as honorary members of the community while in the area._

_Among the visitors was a female by the name of Ntairow. She and Esaax began spending time together and soon bonded, first as friends and then on other, more intimate levels._

_Then, only a few months after arriving, the Fade moved on. Though Ntairow demanded to stay, and Esaax offered up his own pleas for her to remain with the Evergray clan, the elders of the Fade would not allow it. Ntairow was forced to depart with the rest of her clan, held and carried away in the arms of her people, leaving Esaax behind._

_Esaax refused to accept this. He left the caves and tried to follow the Fade through the mountains, but he failed to catch up with them. The nomads were relatively swift, hardy, and used to traveling, whereas Esaax was out of shape. Thus it was that he collapsed there on the mountain trail under his very first sunrise._

_He lay there for hours, breathless, heartsick, hungry, sunburned, and alone. Then some very strange creatures came up the mountain trail and discovered him. They were humans, and they had come in search of unusual and uncommon pokémon, which were to be given away as prizes at the Goldenrod Game Corner. Drained of life as he was, Esaax could do nothing to resist the red beam that pulled him into a very strange state of unbeing._

_Week after week went by as Esaax remained in the confining void of what the humans called a "pokéball". He was let out only to be fed, and the portions given to him were furthermore much too small and too infrequent for his liking. As time passed, he lost all hope of ever finding Ntairow again. When he learned that being the first and only wobbuffet acquired thus far by the Game Corner meant that he had a price in game tokens that virtually no one would be able to afford, he also lost all hope of ever escaping the empty routine into which his life had fallen._

_Then one day, quite literally against the odds, he _was _afforded. Esaax's acquisitor was a man from Palmpona, who brought the wobbuffet home as a birthday present for his son, Benny._

_Now in the hands of very different humans, Esaax lived a very different life. Benny liked his new pokémon a great deal, and a strong friendship between the two was quick in forming. Wherever the human boy went, Esaax was taken along with him, and Esaax was never made to go into the pokéball once he'd made it clear how much he disliked it._

_Esaax lived this way for three years, and he loved it. He found himself wanting things to remain just as they were forever. But in Palmpona, it was inevitable for every pokémon to ultimately become fodder for the town's trading obsession. Though Esaax didn't understand Benny's desire to trade him, he agreed to respect the young human's wishes and allow himself to be put up for trade out of gratitude for the kindness that Benny had shown him._

_As it so happened, the year in which Esaax was involved in the trade expo was the first year in its history in which things would go awry. Thus it was that he accidentally became a member of Team Rocket. His partners consisted of two humans and four pokémon, one of the latter of which was able to speak the humans' language. Though the Team Rocket way of existence seemed to be a cursed one, Esaax also sometimes found it quite amusing in a strange way—fun, even._

_Esaax's new owner, Jessie, didn't really understand much of anything about him, though—not his language, his needs, or his proper use in battle. She also failed to understand his feelings about being kept in a pokéball, but by that time, Esaax had learned how to break out of a pokéball, much to her vexation._

_It was while Esaax was in her possession that the problems with his tail first began to rear their heads. One day found him going into autoempathic crisis and very nearly dying from it. Nearly losing him had the effect of awakening a much greater appreciation for him in Jessie, and she soon became the best human friend that he'd ever had._

_Unfortunately, not long after they had finally connected, the world changed for pokémon—and ended for humans. A plague of fatal sleep mysteriously struck the entire human population all over the globe, bringing extinction to the species—in just a matter of _hours_._

_With Jessie lost in death and something of himself gone along with her, Esaax fled the scene of her demise to wander for days in shock. Sometime later, once his spirit had begun to mend itself, he began seeking old familiarities and acquaintances to use as a foundation on which to rebuild his life. In particular, he sought after his pokémon partners from Team Rocket. However, his quest yielded six no-shows, one rejection, and one successful reunion. That reunion was very promising in the beginning, but ultimately led to tragedy._

_That was the last straw—Esaax's stability was dealt the killing blow. Once again, he tried to run from his sorrow. Eventually, he found himself in the city of Convergence. It was a place that had been the world's first fully-integrated community, in which pokémon and humans had lived, worked, and learned as equals. Following the Extinction, many pokémon there continued to live the lifestyles that the humans had taught them, perhaps as an act of remembrance of the lost species._

_But Esaax had no more luck in finding serenity there than he'd had in any of the other places in which he'd searched. He fell into a spiral of sickness and despair that finally culminated with him trying to provoke a houndoom into killing him. She instead took pity on Esaax, delivering him to the Haven and thus to salvation…_

- o -

With a gentle but nonetheless abrupt severing of mental connections, the session ended. It was still hard for Esaax to believe that over half of a century could be compressed into less than five minutes. As far as he was concerned, though, how it was possible was not important. It was what it determined that mattered.

Usually, Adn would dismiss Esaax with a simple, psychic signal, not saying a single word. This time, however, much to Esaax's surprise, Adn spoke to him for the very first time.

"I see that the sorrows of your history can still evoke pain in you, Esaax," the gardevoir said.

Esaax pondered that for a moment. Then he wilted. "You mean I failed the test?"

Even more unexpected than Adn's speaking up was Adn's suddenly bursting into laughter. "No, no!" he said. "You've passed! If you had _not_ felt hurt by the memories of sadness in your life, _then_ you would have failed. You ache where it is appropriate, and you rejoice where that is appropriate. For you, that is healthy. Numbness is not."

"…So I can go, then?"

"Yes, you certainly may," the gardevoir said, smiling proudly. "Farewell, and good luck to you!"

- o -

The time to return to the world at large had finally come. As Esaax stood before the exit alongside Syr, he bade farewell to the people who had taken such good care of him. Teresa made him smile, Madeline made him feel slightly ill, and a skiploom whom he didn't even know just baffled him by doing something very rude with her tiny arms (which Esaax didn't realize was not intended for him). Adn was not present, apparently already engrossed in another session, but he sent his kind regards with Teresa.

On the verge of tears, yet beaming like the sun, Esaax thanked everyone for their support and waved one last goodbye. Then he passed through the doors as they opened, emerging into the world for what felt like the first time in eons.


	4. The Messenger

**Chapter 4 – The Messenger**

The nearest place to park in the shade was five blocks away from the Haven—five blocks to walk under the harsh midday sun, under which Esaax had not been for years. He certainly wasn't enjoying it, and he continued to wonder how in the world a snorunt could tolerate it at all, shade or no shade. He still halfway expected to find a little gray-and-yellow corpse sitting behind the wheel—or perhaps just a puddle…

Breaking away from that train of thought and the rather morbid turn that it had decided to take, Esaax thought of something that restored some of his sun-drained spirits. "You know what, Syr? I think I'd really like to drive. You just tell me where to go, and I'll go there. Think Jan'll let me?"

"It's 'Jen', Esaax, not 'Jon'," Syr corrected.

"I said 'Jan'."

"Well, whatever you said, it was wrong. And no, you can't drive this car."

"You know I know perfectly well how to drive a car, Syr," Esaax said a bit crossly.

"Not this car. Besides which, I haven't forgotten your record with motor vehicles. Every time you'd try to drive something, _anything_, you'd break it or wreck it, or else you'd just—"

"But they fixed that at the Haven," Esaax interrupted. "They made me stronger so that I could be more careful and less likely to break things."

The arbok at his side raised an eyebrow at him. "Doesn't it seem like more strength should make someone _less_ careful and _more_ likely to break things?"

"I'm not gonna wreck it! Just let me drive the stupid thing!"

"I'll only say this one more time. Listen very carefully. _You_ can't drive _this_ car," Syr said.

Esaax was about to argue some more, but then he actually saw the car—a copper convertible—for himself and knew at first sight that Syr was absolutely right about it. The wobbuffet _couldn't_ drive it, no matter how much he wanted to or how carefully he thought he could do so. The driver's seat had been modified, reshaped expressly for small species to put everything within their reach. The space was so small and everything in it crammed so closely together that it would have been awkward to the point of impossibility for someone Esaax's size to occupy and use.

And there was indeed a snorunt behind the wheel. Despite Esaax's concerns, the ice-type was very much alive and well. Jen scrutinized Esaax through beady little eyes, nibbling every few seconds at a tropical snow cone as he stared. "That's him?" he asked.

"Yes, that's Esaax… Where'd you get that snow cone?" Syr asked.

"An ice cream truck went by not long ago," Jen answered, continuing to stare at Esaax. Then he smiled at the wobbuffet with teeth that looked more than capable of taking off an arm. "I'm very delighted to meet you, Esaax. You can ride up front with me—if you want."

Esaax shivered, finding that smile more than a little unnerving. Nonetheless, he saw that he didn't really have much choice with regards to the seating arrangements since Syr was really too big to ride anywhere but in the back, and so Esaax took his place next to the snorunt, albeit reluctantly. The arbok entered the vehicle after him, coiling loosely across the back seats. With everyone on board, they were on their way.

"So tell me," Esaax said to Jen shortly after they'd headed off, chatting more out of nervousness than actual interest, "how do you plan to drive this thing once you evolve and don't have hands anymore?"

"He's not evolving," Syr said.

"Now, that's not fair," said Esaax. "You can't forbid him to evolve just because you're scared of—"

"No, it's all right," said Jen. "I don't want to become a glalie. If he said 'do it', I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it for anyone."

"Huh. I always thought it'd be kind of neat to evolve," said Esaax.

"You never have?" Jen asked.

"Well, yeah, I have, before I was born. But that doesn't really count."

"Huh… Anyway, it isn't 'kind of neat'—it's _major_. It isn't just your shape that changes—your whole life changes. Especially when it comes to changing into a glalie…"

Jen gave a small shudder and went dead silent, apparently not wanting to proceed any further with that topic. Luckily, they arrived at their destination just then, preventing things from getting any more awkward. The three of them got out of the car, and Jen unlocked the front door.

Esaax, Syr, and Jen entered the house, and a place quite far from Esaax's expectations opened up before him. This had once been a home for humans, and outwardly it appeared as though it still were one. But on the inside, only a scattered few furnishings, such as a television and a rather large, gray sofa, still spoke of its former residents. In the place of human décor, the home had largely taken on a more natural appearance, fashioned into a curious amalgam of a woodland burrow and a cave.

Esaax tossed himself onto the sofa like a bean bag and stared up at the ceiling and the artificial stalactites that hung there; he had to shoo away an sudden, unbidden mental image of one of them breaking off and falling on him. "How long did it take to put all this together?" he asked, indicating his surroundings with a wave of his hand.

"Couple of months," Syr answered. "It was started right after I got Jen. We actually had a pretty small team working together on it; I'm surprised the work went by so fast."

"I think it's cool," Esaax said. "You guys did a good job."

"Nomel cookie?"

Esaax looked over to his right from whence that voice had just sounded and found Jen offering him some dainty-looking little cookies on a tray. There was that disturbing smile again—_was_ that a smile? _Man, that kid's creepy,_ Esaax thought. He took two of the cookies and thanked Jen so as not to risk offending the snorunt's feelings—he didn't want to find out the hard way just what those teeth could do.

Esaax popped a couple of the cookies into his mouth, but a weird twinge prickling across the back of his mind in the next moment distracted him from their flavor at once. Someone—and _something_—was coming his way. He was given no time at all to figure out how or why he knew this, for just as soon as the notion had hit him, that someone was knocking at the door.

"I'll get it," Syr said as he went to answer the door. He opened it and found a xatu standing on the other side.

"Misters Esaax Evergray and Syr. Someone wishes to speak with you," the xatu said.

"How did you find us?" asked Esaax as he rose to join Syr.

"Who wants to speak with us?" demanded Syr.

"I foresaw myself arriving at this destination prior to leaving," the xatu said in response to the first question. To the latter, "You are summoned by one Faurur ursh Nanku."

Both Esaax's and Syr's eyes widened dramatically at this. Syr's mouth fell slightly open, but he remained silent.

"I shall wait for you outside until you are ready to leave." Without even touching it, the xatu closed the door on the bewildered recipients of his message.

Esaax and Syr looked at each other for a few moments, neither saying a word. Finally, "Jen?" Syr spoke up, turning toward where Jen still stood with his cookie tray. "Esaax and I need to have a talk in private," the arbok said. Jen nodded in acquiescence.

Syr led Esaax into the bathroom and shut the door. Esaax noticed that unlike the other parts of the house that he'd seen, the bathroom was almost completely unchanged from the way that humans had intended it to be. All the fixtures were still intact—including the toilet. Unbidden curiosities made it to the surface of his mind, even in spite of the much heavier thoughts already there.

Fortunately, Syr brought Esaax back into focus before he couldn't help asking as well as wondering. "I'm not so sure about this," the arbok said. "You're the psychic. Tell me: can we really be so sure about this guy?"

"I'm psychic, but I'm no mind-reader. Still, I'm pretty sure he's for real. I got this… this _feeling_ about him just before he showed up. I knew he was coming, and that his arrival was very important somehow."

"A premonition?"

"I guess so. I can still feel the weight of that, plus… something else. I've just got this instinct about him, and it just feels really, really _big_." He shrugged. "It's enough for me to vouch for him, anyway."

The wobbuffet noticed then that he was pacing and realized that he'd been doing so ever since he'd entered the bathroom. He'd overestimated his nerves yet again. He managed to get his legs to stop moving, but his tail kept on anxiously switching back and forth. Though he tried, he could not calm it.

Sighing in surrender to his unrest, Esaax said, "You know, that's actually what I wanted to discuss with you back at the Haven—not the xatu, obviously. I mean, you know, what all you two did after you left T—" He felt his voice catch in his throat. "What you guys did after you left us, and how Faurur's been lately…"

"I actually haven't talked with him in a long time," Syr said, sounding a bit troubled.

"Her," Esaax corrected.

"…What?"

"You really _haven't_ seen Faurur in a long time…" Esaax remarked. "What's been keeping you guys out of touch? I always thought you were like the ultimate best friends and all…"

"Hey, it wasn't like it was _my_ fault!" Syr blurted out. The outburst surprised even him. He took a moment to stop and breathe. "Sorry… sorry, it's not like it was really Faurur's fault, either. Something happened—something weird. It happened almost right after Faurur and I parted ways with you. These lights that were like nothing I'd ever seen before appeared and moved across the sky one night. The next day, the koffing were all saying that their 'gods' had arrived. They demanded that my people swear loyalty to these gods, too.

"We had no clue what they were talking about, and we weren't about to just give ourselves and our faith to total strangers. So the koffing drove us all away—you wouldn't believe how strong they can be in a group. I never did find out if Faurur was on their side… Anyway, since _you_ obviously _have_ seen him—her—more recently than I have, tell me: when you were with her then, how was she?"

"Well, first of all," Esaax tended first to the unspoken question that he suspected that Syr was harboring, "they're able to do that by just deciding to do that. Change sexes, I mean. _How_ they're able to do that, I don't know at all, but they are. Anyway, the reason Faurur did was because the koffing had chosen her to be their new colony leader, but the thing is, they have this law that the colony leader always has to be female. She told me that was why she made the change."

Esaax hesitated then. He didn't really want to go on and tell of what had happened between himself and Faurur, for the memory pained him to no small degree. But at the same time, he couldn't help feeling like he owed it to Syr given that the arbok and weezing had known each other and had been close friends long before he'd come into the picture.

As Esaax began to tell his story, his voice underwent a marked transformation. His words were strained; it was all too clear that he was forcing them out.

"After the Extinction," Esaax began, "I tried to get back together with some of the old crew. No luck finding anybody other than Basath, but… well, she hates me… You never got to meet her, though, did you?"

"No, I didn't," Syr confirmed.

A strange, distinctly sour look took over Esaax's features. "Well, consider yourself lucky," he said, and his tone told that he was not at all interested in continuing any further on that subject.

"Eventually, I managed to find Faurur," he then said. "Now, as for these 'gods' you were talking about, she made no mention of any such thing. And when I asked her where you were, the answer she gave me was really ambiguous. She told me that you and the ekans just decided to go off on your own somewhere, and that you gave no explanation as to why.

"What she said didn't seem suspicious to me at the time. I don't remember that anything about the situation did. But I'm not surprised that I missed the signs. I was… kind of in another mind at the time…

"Anyway…" Esaax's voice began to tremble and crack. "…Anyway, something went wrong—nothing to do with gods or sky-lights or any such crap. Faurur wanted to know, of course, whatever had become of her poor, precious 'Master'. She actually, honestly _didn't know_; that's how far-removed her life had become. I had to break _that_ news to her. I had to deliver _that_ message—it was _awful_.

"You can just imagine her reaction, right?" But before Syr could answer, "_Wrong_. You have no idea. I mean, the level of adoration there… it's much greater than we ever thought. I told her, and it was like I'd just ripped her right open…"

Esaax, having begun to pace again as he spoke, came to a stop once more. But this time, rather than standing, he sank, sliding down the wall until he was slouched against it on the floor with his spine bent at almost a right angle.

"It was _awful_," he repeated. "I just felt like a monster for making her feel that way. I swore that, no matter what, I would do anything to help her. I gave her that pain, so I had to be the one to take it away. I had to be there for her so she could recover."

His voice changed yet again; it was now barely more than an exhalation. "We became very, very close…"

Syr had had his head lowered in the somberness that his friend was casting over the room. He looked back up at Esaax then and found the wobbuffet staring at nothing.

"We became very close," Esaax continued, "and then… and then we…" He swallowed very hard. "We had an egg."

For a moment, Syr was too surprised to say anything. When he found his voice and his wits again, he asked, "So… was it a boy, or a girl?"

Esaax smiled very faintly. "It was a girl," the wobbuffet answered. "A koffing, of course, but a little more blue than purple because of me. When she hatched, she was so tiny that I could hold her in one hand…"

His smile widened, but became very shaky. "She was named Drasigon, and I really liked that name. Faurur told me that it means 'never ignored', and I agreed on it instantly."

Startlingly, his gaze locked back into focus in a single moment. With a stare like a homing missile straight into Syr's eyes, Esaax said, "Guess how long she lasted."

"What?"

"Come on, guess."

_What kind of a thing is _that _to say?_ Syr wondered. "…How long?" he finally asked.

There was no response.

"How long?" Syr asked again, more gingerly this time.

"_Four days_," Esaax answered abruptly, harshly. "_Four days_. That's _all_. Four days, and then she just burst into flames, just like that. And then she was _gone_, Syr, like some evil magic hit her. _For no reason_!"

Esaax was shaking so hard at this point that it looked like he could just fall apart. His eyes closed, overflowing with tears. As Syr stared at him in shock and sorrow, he thought that he saw something that disconcerted him even further: for just a second, there seemed to be a faint, multicolored aura around Esaax.

"And Faurur was there when it happened, too," Esaax went on. "We were just frozen there for a little while. I looked her right in the eyes, and… and I just didn't know what to _do_, so I… so I just _ran_…"

Silently weeping, Syr gathered up the wobbuffet in his coils and embraced him tightly as if trying to hold him together. Though Syr certainly wanted to reunite with Faurur, he wasn't sure it was such a good idea for Esaax to revisit that aspect of his past face-to-face (or faces, as it were), regardless of whether or not the wobbuffet wished to do so. In fact, Syr began to wonder if maybe the only place Esaax ought to be going was right back to the Haven…

Before he could say anything to that effect, however, Esaax took a very deep breath, stood once more, and then removed himself from the arbok's coils with total ease. "I have to go back to her," the wobbuffet said. "_Right now_."

"Are… are you sure that's such a good idea?" Syr asked quietly.

"She needs us," Esaax responded, wiping the tears from his face as well as he could. "_Both_ of us. She wouldn't have called for us both if she didn't. If something happened to her because I couldn't be there for her…" He swallowed hard again. "…I don't think I could forgive myself, Syr."

Syr frowned at Esaax for a moment, still unsure about the situation. Esaax lowered his gaze, then turned toward the door. Sighing, Syr followed him out of the room and back to where the xatu was waiting, hoping that this was indeed the safer course of action for his friend to take.


	5. The Fire and the Air

**Chapter 5 – The Fire and the Air**

A golden light swelled around Syr, Esaax, and the xatu. When it faded, the xatu bowed and bade them farewell, saying that he knew when to return for them. And with that, he teleported away, leaving Esaax and Syr alone and somewhat confused.

Where the bird brought them was not where either had expected to go. They were in a very long and narrow alleyway. Two tall, rather plain buildings loomed up on either side, and a huge cement wall created a dead end. The structures cast dreary, gray shadows into the alley that made it seem later in the day than it actually was.

"Look at this place," Esaax said. "This could be any city… there's no telling where we are." He kicked at an old, dented soda can. "You know… I think it's a little strange that Faurur had us brought to meet her here when she could have had that xatu bring her to us."

"I'm not surprised she chose to do things this way, actually," Syr said, then shook his head as if trying to clear something out of it. "Poison-folk don't tolerate being exposed to psychic energy very well. I know I didn't particularly enjoy the trip, but I don't think we really went very far. Otherwise, I'd _really_ be feeling it. Faurur, however, doesn't live anywhere near my house. It wouldn't have been good for her to teleport that whole distance," Syr explained.

"Right, of course… That makes sense."

Syr nodded. "So where is she?"

"She's here. I can totally feel it."

"Oh, I know. I'm aware of her, too; she's got to be nearby," Syr said. "I'll just keep looking over here, and you can—" He fell silent.

"Syr?"

"Esaax, come here," the arbok said softly.

Esaax heeded the arbok, feeling an awful, compelling sort of dread. He had a sickening suspicion about what he was about to see. _What did he find?_ he wondered. _Dear Night… she's not _dead_, is she? _

It turned out that Faurur wasn't dead, but her current state suggested that that might not be the case for much longer. She was reduced to lying deflated on the asphalt, pale and shapeless.

Esaax leaned forward as close to her as he could, but he couldn't have reached eye level with her at this point without melting into the earth. Tears stung his eyes as they registered the sight before him. He could barely breathe, feeling as though he could just cave in on himself at any moment, just as she had done.

But _why_ had she? What had happened to her? Esaax had only seen Faurur this way once before: one time (out of countless many), when their meowth-head balloon had been shot down by that particular pikachu, she had landed very ungracefully upon the rocks below. Her mantle had torn, leaving her deflated and unable to get up off of the ground until she was given the necessary medical attention.

Esaax could see no sign of a breach this time, but still… "What did this to you?" he asked hoarsely.

"Nothing," Faurur replied, her twin voices sounding very weak. "Nothing but the seasons. One hundred and thirteen seasons… too many…"

"What? Oh no, that's right…" Esaax said as he remembered. It was a statistic that Faurur had mentioned to him while they had been waiting for their egg to hatch. About one hundred seasons, or twenty-five years, was generally as long as any weezing could expect to live. Most didn't make it anywhere near that far, and yet Faurur had managed to surpass that mark.

Thus, Faurur was very, _very_ old. Esaax explained these details to Syr while Faurur remained silently gathering her strength for more crucial words. The two gazed upon her with immense sorrow as the apparent truth sunk in fully: she had not called them there to help her but rather to say goodbye.

"Listen," Faurur spoke up then. "I came here to warn you. Beware the strangers from the sky!"

"From the sky…" Syr's mind, seeming reluctant to process this situation further, didn't know what to do with Faurur's unexpected warning at first. "…Do you mean the sky-lights? I thought those were your gods," Syr said.

Faurur emitted a sound of loathing, a deep groan that was alarmingly loud given her condition. "Gods?" she scoffed. "Deranics aren't gods. _Worms_, maybe. But _not_ gods. They tricked us. They promised us happiness. But they brought only slavery. My whole colony—my _family_, all of them, never to be free again. And after we fought _so hard_ for them!" She stared up at Syr with anguish in all four of her eyes.

"I know," the arbok said, his voice constrained. "It's okay. Your people didn't really mean to drive mine away, did they?"

"No. The deranics controlled us with their _lies_. But listen, they won't stop with us. More will come and spread their worm-lies through all lands. They'll seem so nice at first, but _don't trust them_—that's how they started with us. Then they said, 'Obey us or die.' And someday they'll say this to everyone if they can."

Faurur lowered her voices even more then, as if afraid of someone overhearing. "This is very important. Pay attention and never forget: Their plan to control has already begun. Already something huge has been done to the world by them. I know because I heard it from them myself. They think we're too stupid to remember what they say… Anyway, they call it…"

She had to stop to catch her breath, but she was also working through a minor frustration. Finally, she forced herself to continue. "They call it '_Seterhath Zulo-Denvenda_'." And then she literally spat. "Filthy worm-language! We all know some of their words, but these…"

Faurur winced, revealing her pain for the first time. "I have no time," she said, half-panting. "You must figure it out. Don't forget: beware the deranics. And don't forget '_Seterhath Zulo-Denvenda_'. Figure it out and warn the world, please!"

"We will. Don't worry," Syr said. Esaax nodded in agreement.

Faurur smiled at them. But then she cried out in agony.

Esaax cringed at the horrid noise—and just as it erupted from the dying weezing, a shard of burning pain sliced deep into his chest. In that moment, suspicions that he'd had about himself for a long time grew stronger than ever before.

"Faurur… I think I can help you," he said then, his voice sounding very fragile. He leaned forward and laid his hand upon her as he spoke—just as he had done once before, with someone else…

Her body was utterly still save for the vague fluttering of her mantle as she breathed. Esaax, however, was shaking so hard that he could barely stand as he struggled to accomplish what he was still only partially certain that he could actually do. Even as the first hints of a multicolored aura began to blink into existence around him, he feared that his efforts would prove to be in vain. Still, he kept trying, feeling that he owed her greatly, and for reasons beyond her having been a friend and a lover to him.

"I'm so sorry," he managed in barely more than a whisper.

Faurur no longer howled or screamed. She seemed to have moved beyond pain. She only made a small, puzzled noise at Esaax, seeming not to understand what he was saying.

"For running away," Esaax elaborated. "For abandoning you all those years ago. First… first, Drasigon left you, and then I…"

Faurur actually gave a little chuckle of surprise. "Is that all? It's fine! Don't cry, I'm not angry at you. You just didn't understand. Drasigon never _left_. She just changed into the air. You see? You just didn't understand then, so you ran away. But now maybe you _do_ understand."

_She must be delirious…_ Esaax thought. "I still shouldn't have just taken off on you like that."

"_It's fine_," Faurur repeated. "Why do you fret? You're here now, right? Now is all that matters. Drasigon is here, too, in the air. Can't you feel her?"

_So _that's _what she's saying._ Esaax kept his hand upon Faurur despite how unnervingly warm she suddenly became. "I was always told that we become part of the earth after… you know."

"Maybe," Faurur said softly. "All I know is the fire and the air…"

And then, as if on cue, flames blossomed from within her. She gazed up at Esaax and Syr, her expression now showing nothing but pure and serene adoration even as the fire raged. Within mere seconds, the flames had consumed her completely.

The fire had caused Esaax to involuntarily pull his hand away, but how close that hand had come to being burned could not have been further from his mind. He had not had time to completely form the psychic link by which he had hoped to help Faurur. A sense of having failed her grew within him, and he felt as though it were hollowing him out inside.

As Esaax watched Faurur's ashes and embers float away, he felt Syr gently lay his tail-tip upon his shoulder.

"Esaax… I think there's someplace you really need to be," the arbok said quietly.

Then, just as the xatu had said would happen, the golden light of teleportation bloomed once again to bring them home.


	6. Hope

**Chapter 6 – Hope**

The door opened for Syr and Esaax thanks to the dutiful snorunt standing right inside. Jen had been waiting on full alert for the slightest sign of anyone approaching since the arbok and wobbuffet had left.

"There was no one to bite while you were away," he said.

"That's good," Syr said in a low, very drained-sounding voice. He slithered into the house with all the liveliness of a zombie. He was practically carrying Esaax, who was even less animate in his bereavement.

Syr placed the listless wobbuffet on the sofa and made his way into the kitchen, fully aware that Jen was following him. Without turning, he said, "I'm about to need you and your car. Esaax is going right back to the Haven."

"Going back?" There was a constant clicking as Jen's tiny, gray feet hopped and skittered across the linoleum. He was apparently having a very hard time holding still.

Syr sighed heavily. "We've just experienced… something difficult. I'm worried that Esaax might not be well enough to handle it."

Syr told Jen about what had happened in the alley with Faurur. He also told him about the strange aura that had appeared around Esaax before they had gone to see her.

"They must have made some kind of mistake at the Haven. I think he's still suffering from some kind of psychic disturbance," he said.

"I see… Maybe what he needs can't be found in any hospital," Jen suggested.

Though the weight of Syr's account of Faurur's passing had forced the snorunt to grow still, it was still obvious that something was gnawing at him. "Are you all right?" Syr asked of him.

Jen gave Syr a quick glance with preoccupied eyes and swallowed hard. "I'm fine," he answered. "I _think_ I am, anyway."

"I hope you are; I'd hate for you to get sick, too. Now, what were you saying?"

"About the Haven? I said that maybe they can't help him there. He might do better to come to Hope with me tonight. Maybe he just needs the support of a commiserating audience."

"I'm not quite sure you completely understand the nature of this situation, Jen," Syr said.

"Yes, I do," Jen said. "Everyone at the Hope Institute does. People go there because they've experienced loss. They go there to find inner peace. That's what it was built for. I know they've done a world of good for me. Especially before you came along—they were a _family_ for me. They were always there for me.

"Look, the Haven has obviously failed Esaax, right? I know he's a major friend of yours. So if you respect him so much, why give him back to that place and those people and let them have another chance to fail him when there might just be a better way?"

Jen's words hit their mark. Syr couldn't help but believe that if there was any chance that something could still be awry within Esaax—and Syr had seen things firsthand that were strange enough to convince him that something _was_—then the Haven really should have recognized it and not released him. It seemed to Syr that there might well be a degree of incompetence—or _something_—at work within the Haven, and he found himself wanting to give them a piece of his mind if not his fangs about it.

"I think you might be right, Jen," Syr said finally. "Maybe it's about time someone took a different approach to this. For his sake."

Jen nodded insofar as he could. "Maybe you should go, too. I couldn't help noticing your tears…"

Syr hadn't noticed them. He quickly turned his head. "I'd… really rather not." He forced himself to meet Jen's gaze once more. "But don't worry. I think all I need is some quiet time alone to remember. Then I'll be fine."

"Okay. I'm going to try and talk to him, if that's all right."

"Go ahead."

Jen fetched the nomel cookies and a tall glass of water and carried them to the living room and the spiritless wobbuffet therein.

Esaax was still lying on the sofa. Mentally, however, he was quite absent. He seemed not to notice or care that his head and arms had come to dangle over the armrest, his face steadily turning a much deeper shade of blue.

Jen placed the cookies and water on the little coffee table in front of Esaax. Esaax paid no mind.

"I brought you some refreshments," the snorunt said brightly, but he may as well have spoken to a big, blue brick. He frowned concernedly at the wobbuffet. "You shouldn't be hanging upside-down like that. You're going to get a head rush."

He tried pushing Esaax's head back up over the armrest, but it was too large and heavy for him to hoist up. So Jen decided to take a different approach. He hopped up onto the other end of the sofa and grabbed Esaax by the pods. With a tremendous effort, Jen managed to pull the wobbuffet back up into a more proper resting position.

Jen sat down on the armrest opposite Esaax, panting as he did so. "Phew… you may not be _quite_ as heavy as you look, but still!" As soon as he caught his breath, he made his move. "I heard all about what happened today, Esaax," he said in a kindly voice. "I understand what you're going through. That's why I offer the best thing in the world for you right now."

If Esaax was listening, if he was even hearing Jen's words, he gave no indication of it. He was still enveloped in his reverie, feeling as though he were disembodied and drifting.

Jen went on in spite of Esaax's lack of responsiveness. "I invite… I _request_ your presence at the Hope Institute tonight. We'll all be there for you, Esaax. You'll get whatever you need to ease your pain. If you want to talk about it with others who've also lost someone they love, you can. If you don't want to talk about it, well, that's fine, too. I know you'll find comfort just by being there. They'll support you, just like they've supported me. So what do you say, Esaax? Would you like to come along with me tonight?"

Jen's speech seemed to have been in vain. Esaax just continued his zombielike stare into nothingness with glazed eyes and sagging lips, completely unresponsive.

Jen sighed. _How in the world could I possibly get through to him?_ he wondered. There was no question in his mind that Esaax needed to be brought to the Hope Institute. How then, Jen wondered, could he get the wobbuffet to agree to it when it seemed impossible to get a response of any kind out of him?

"_Can't respond" means "can't refuse",_ the snorunt considered.

Jen dismissed that notion at once. He was sure that Syr wouldn't allow one of his best friends to be taken involuntarily into something that he'd initially doubted himself, at least not without making things more difficult than they needed to be. And being just in the next room, he'd have overheard the whole scene, so there was no use lying to him about Esaax's compliance. _What do I _do_, then?_

Jen stared like a bird of prey at the untouched glass of water as he mulled over this problem. As he did, the liquid began a curious transformation. It shimmered and gave a slight quiver, and then with a tiny _crack_, it instantly froze thoroughly. It then began sprouting upward, spreading out into intricate, crystalline branches as it rose up from within the glass.

Strangely, this tree made of ice seemed to be just what it took to coax Esaax out of his reverie. The moment it caught his eye, he was enthralled by it, finding the shapes that the enchanted ice was forming soothing and mesmerizing in an odd way.

Esaax noticed the snorunt out of the corner of his eye. _Is _he _doing this?_ he wondered. _Wait… is he _glowing_?_ Esaax turned his sights fully toward Jen… but it seemed that there was no glow about him after all.

_Huh. Must have imagined that,_ Esaax thought idly. _Back to the tree… pretty…_ Still spellbound by the moving ice, he asked, "Where did you say this was?" in a voice that was devoid of inflection.

That utterance snapped Jen out of his own altered state. Only then did he notice the ice tree, and he gasped in shock as he realized what had been happening. _I almost let it go that time…_ It was getting harder and harder for him to resist the urges of a body that wanted desperately to evolve.

He was about to revert the ice sculpture to water once more… but then he realized something. "Oh, um, it's called the Hope Institute. It's just on the other side of town," he replied hurriedly. "Are you saying you wish to go?" As he spoke, he melted the ice tree, but not all at once. The branches curled in on themselves and liquefied gracefully but nonetheless quickly.

Esaax was wearing a smile that looked both contented and intoxicated. "Yeah," he answered, "sure…"

The ice sculpture was soon gone, and Jen was satisfied that it had successfully cast whatever strange, hypnotic spell it had carried—and that he had gotten rid of it before it could be noticed by anyone else.

Sighing with relief, Jen hopped off of the sofa. Before he went to confirm his successful persuasion to Syr, he stopped to clasp one of Esaax's hands in both of his own. "Good choice, friend," he said with a smile.

_Better than you know,_ he added silently.

- o -

Mid-evening, Jen's convertible pulled up to the curb across the street from the sprawling, single-story structure that was the Hope Institute. It had no identifying characteristics other than a simple wooden sign on which the word "HOPE" was painted in black unown-characters. The sign was crudely lit from beneath with a single lightbulb.

As Jen led Esaax (who was now once again independently mobile, albeit still seeming a bit spellbound) through the entrance, a sceptile at the door stopped and bowed in front of them.

"Blessings," she said, her tone very warm and inviting.

"Blessings to you, too," Jen replied, bowing in turn.

"Is the wobbuffet new here?" the sceptile asked.

"Yes, ma'am. I trust he'll be welcomed?"

"Of course." The sceptile turned to Esaax. "Blessings," she repeated, bowing to him and offering her clawed hands, which Esaax took as he returned what seemed to be the ritual greeting in this place.

"May your spirit be ever light," the sceptile said in farewell, as Jen and Esaax left her behind to proceed further into the Hope Institute.

Esaax found himself led into an assembly space of some sort: a vast, well-lit room whose walls were plastered with posters bearing various uplifting slogans in unown-script. Looking around, he saw a diverse collection of pokémon species gathering in this place. A few of the attendees were milling about, while others were conversing with one another in small cliques. Most of them, however, were already forming a nice and orderly audience. Standing, sitting, coiled, grounded, or perched in semi-loose rows, they all had their eyes or equivalent sensory organs trained straight forward at a presently unoccupied, scarlet-curtained stage.

Clearly something was about to take place upon that stage, and so Esaax turned his attention forward, too. It wasn't long before the stage was no longer empty.

A hitmonlee stepped out from behind the curtain, carrying a microphone and a clipboard. He scanned the audience briefly, and for a moment he looked like he was ready to speak. But then he glanced at his clipboard and gave the mouthless equivalent of a frown.

The hitmonlee turned and shouted something to someone offstage, though Esaax was too far away to hear exactly what was said. At the hitmonlee's call, an especially large glalie drifted across the stage toward him.

"Hey, Jen," Esaax said, continuing to sound only partially present. "That glalie up there… is that someone you know?"

"Huh? Oh, you mean him? Not really, no. He works here now; that's all I know for sure. I think most of them in Convergence do—the glalie, I mean."

"You're sure you don't know him? Cause he's acting like he knows _you_. He's looking this way right now."

Indeed he was. As the glalie was being consulted by the hitmonlee, he was also casting an eye into the audience every other second. He had apparently become fixated on Jen and Esaax's general location.

"Why does he keep looking at us like that?" Esaax asked, nervousness beginning to break through his previously dazed tone.

The glalie hesitantly broke eye contact with Esaax and Jen as he finished his conversation with the hitmonlee. Then he went right back to giving the two of them the laser-eye. His stare unbreaking, the glalie descended from the stage and started making his way into the audience.

"Why is he coming this way?" Esaax asked in a small, slightly panicked voice.

"Relax," Jen said. "I'm sure he just wants to say hello."

As the glalie came to a halt before the two of them, Esaax strongly hoped that Jen was right.

"Blessings," the glalie said.

"Blessings," Esaax and Jen returned in unison.

The glalie's gaze shifted more toward Esaax. "Pardon me," he said, "but could you come with me, please?"

"…What for?" Esaax asked uneasily. He found himself starting to shiver and wished that he could stop, but his now steadily building unease wouldn't let him do so. He was beginning to realize in earnest that he didn't really have any idea what was going on here, and the current face of his uncertainty was just too large and too close for comfort.

"I'm sorry, but this is the youth assembly," the glalie answered. "You'll want our adult group."

Esaax took another look around and finally recognized that the audience was indeed comprised entirely of children and adolescents. He looked to Jen, but the snorunt made no move to contradict the glalie.

With a nod and a vaguely affirmative noise, Esaax agreed to follow the glalie to this "adult group". But just as they were about to leave, the glalie hesitated and turned back around. He was staring again, but only at Jen this time, and the glalie looked distinctly conflicted as he did so.

However, the action terminated without explanation, the same way as it had begun. The glalie abandoned whatever that pause might have led to in something of a hurry, leaving Esaax scrambling to catch up.

Esaax followed behind the glalie through corridor after corridor. He might have been more fascinated by how swiftly such a creature was able to move in spite of having no legs and looking to be very heavy were it not for the fact that he was growing more confused and anxious by the second.

_What is this place… and why did I come here?_ He honestly could not remember. His mind offered only blankness whenever he tried to present it with those questions.

He had other questions, too: _Where are we going, exactly? How big is this place, anyway? The youth assembly looked like it was about to start when we left; wouldn't the adult meeting have started by now, too? Shouldn't we already be there?_

Unless that's not really where we're going… That thought was truly unsettling. _What if I really _am _in some kind of trouble… Oh crap, am I?_

Esaax almost tried seeing if the glalie would shed some light on things, but he found that asking questions to his back wasn't much easier than asking them to his face.

He couldn't just stay quiet, though; as it ever did, his nervousness forbade it. So rather than just come out with what he really wanted to say, Esaax opted to start out with small talk, hoping that it would help him to bring about more important questions and their answers with greater ease and grace.

"Excuse me, uh, sir?" Esaax began tentatively.

"Hm?"

"What's your name?" Esaax asked.

"Solonn," the glalie answered, "and you?"

"I'm Esaax."

"Ah, all right, then. Pleasure to meet you, Esaax," Solonn said.

The glalie's last few words didn't quite reach Esaax. Whatever the ice tree had set upon Esaax's mind was continuing to dissolve at an increasing rate, and it was now being replaced just as quickly by a growing, unrelenting feeling that he had forgotten something crucially important, the sort of thing that should be utterly impossible to forget.

"I'm afraid we're already a little late," Solonn then said, "but the good news is that I know a shortcut through the building that'll keep you from missing too much more of the assembly. We'll just go right around here, and—"

Solonn halted all of a sudden, neither executing his turn nor finishing his sentence. A pair of doors to his right had just slid open unexpectedly. A second later, there emerged the most peculiar creature…


	7. One on One

**Chapter 7 – One on One**

Esaax stared at the creature who had just stepped out into the corridor. The newcomer stood on two legs and had chin-length, reddish-brown hair. He wore human clothing, which in and of itself wasn't terribly remarkable; Esaax had seen the occasional pokémon wear human-style clothing before, both prior to and after the Extinction. What had taken such a strong hold of Esaax's attention was the fact that it really looked as though this wasn't just another instance of a pokémon dressing like a human…

Esaax shook his head, dismissing that possibility as well as he could. _There's no way,_ he told himself silently. _It has to be a trick of some kind. Like a disguise or something…_

"Sir… don't you have an assembly to address?" Solonn asked of the newcomer.

"Nope, not this time. I've decided to put my new office to work and devote tonight to one on one sessions," the newcomer replied perkily. There was something strange about his voice; it sounded slightly unnatural somehow, as though he were performing a less-than-perfect impression of another person. "Don't worry, though. Cain'll cover for me. He can run the show this time instead of just playing second fiddle. The experience oughtta do him some good."

It was then that he noticed Esaax. His eyes widened, and he smiled, but there was an odd, masklike quality to his face that made the expression seem a little off. "Hey, there! Haven't seen you around here before!" He offered his hand to the wobbuffet; Esaax took it after a moment's hesitation, and was given a vigorous handshake with a surprisingly strong grip. "The name's Sylvester DeLeo, and I'm the president and founder of this fine establishment. And you are…?"

"…Esaax" the wobbuffet replied.

"Glad to make your acquaintance, Esaax," DeLeo said, still smiling. "Say… do you mind if I ask you a quick question?"

"Uh… No, I guess not," Esaax responded.

"Okay, then. Tell me, what clan are you from?" DeLeo asked.

"Evergray," Esaax answered, vaguely wondering why DeLeo wanted to know such a thing.

"Ah." DeLeo straightened his posture. "All right, Esaax, if you'll just follow me, I'll take you to my private counseling office," he said, gesturing toward the room off to the side from whence he'd come.

Esaax stared at the doors in uncertainty for a moment. He looked toward where Solonn had been hovering and found that the glalie had excused himself, taking his knowledge of how to get to the adult assembly with him. "Could I still go to the assembly?" he asked of DeLeo.

"Well, you could," DeLeo said, "but you've already missed a good chunk of it. If you come with me we can take it from the top. Not only that, but your concerns—what _you_ need—could be addressed more directly this way. Seeing as how you're a first-timer here, I think you'd definitely benefit more from that than from walking in on a meeting that's not only half-over but is also really geared more toward helping people out with more generalized problems."

That seemed to make enough sense, at least as far as Esaax was concerned. The idea of going to a meeting and possibly not being able to understand what in the world the people there were talking about didn't appeal to him at all; he was dealing with enough confusion as it was. "Okay," Esaax said, allowing DeLeo to lead him into the private counseling office.

DeLeo took a seat behind a desk at the far end of the rather small room, then gestured toward a trio of chairs in differing styles and sizes that were lined up against the wall to Esaax's right. Esaax regarded them for a couple of moments but then shook his head, indicating that he'd rather just stand.

Esaax had now fully emerged from the tranquilizing haze that had enveloped him, but his amnesia still remained. He was so preoccupied in his search for his missing memories that it was quite difficult to pay unbroken attention to anything going on externally; as such, he didn't notice right away when the office became significantly darker. He cast a glance up at the now quite dim lights above him, then turned his sights back toward DeLeo.

"Thought you'd be a bit more comfortable this way," DeLeo explained. "I know wobbuffet aren't too keen on bright light." He folded his hands on the desk before him. "So. Before we begin, I'm curious: how'd you discover us, Esaax?" he asked. "Did a friend tell you about us?"

A friend? Esaax didn't exactly _know_ Jen, per se, but he nonetheless responded with, "Yeah."

"Well, I'm glad you took your friend's advice. You did the right thing coming here, Esaax. I promise you: we're gonna help you out, no matter what it takes, okay? Now, the first thing you've gotta do, though, is you need to tell me exactly what's wrong."

_That's what _I _wanna know!_ Esaax thought desperately, still struggling to regain his memory and perhaps thereby also gain some clue as to what he was even doing in this strange place. He remained silent, staring at DeLeo with a very troubled look.

"It's okay, Esaax," DeLeo assured him. "You can trust me. Anything you tell me will remain strictly confidential. So you can just go right on ahead and let me know what's troubling you."

Esaax would have gladly let it all out if only he'd known what "it" was. Once again, he strained his mind for the answer, doubting that his efforts would yield any success.

But then DeLeo provided the answer for him: "You've lost someone who meant a lot to you, haven't you?"

Esaax felt his heart seem to stop for a moment, his breath catching halfway up his throat, as the last mind-blocking remnants of his trance shattered into nothingness. His full memory returned with a brutal suddenness, the sorrows that it carried revealed anew. Such stark lucidity following such a thick mental fog was painful for him, and he couldn't help crying out.

"That's right," DeLeo said soothingly. "Just let it all out." He noticed that Esaax was beginning to pitch and sway on the spot as if his spine were turning to rubber. DeLeo stood and managed to pull up a chair for Esaax just in time for the wobbuffet to collapse into it.

DeLeo then returned to his seat. "You've got something in common with just about everyone who's come here, you know. Just like you, they're also mourning people they loved—particularly their lost human friends. I know you're gonna have no problem finding people here who can relate to your suffering."

"No one can do that," Esaax croaked, his eyes suddenly overflowing with tears. "They can't possibly understand how I let her—how I let _both_ of them down. How I failed them." He turned away in shame. "They died because of me," he whispered.

"Oh, Esaax, no. You know better than that," DeLeo tried to console him. "It _wasn't your fault_ that—"

"But maybe it was!" Esaax interrupted. "I… I don't know. Look, there's something you don't know about me. I know it's gonna sound crazy, but… there's something strange inside me. I don't know what it is, but… it can heal people. I just _know_ it can. It could even _stop them from dying_, but I just don't understand it enough to know how…"

As Esaax spoke, he stared into the "eyes" of his own tail, gazing into their reddish-black blankness as if he could find the long-sought understanding of his own internal mysteries there. He finally closed both his eyes and his oculons in despair.

"Both times, I didn't really think very much about doing it, if at all," Esaax said in a low, cracking voice. "I just tried, and I _failed_. First Jessie, all those years ago. And then Faurur, just today! If I'm still not good enough to save the people I care about after all this time, then I never will be…"

Esaax fell silent then, but DeLeo gave no immediate response to what he'd said. DeLeo's face had taken on what was as close to a somber expression as it seemed capable of, and his gaze was cast downward.

"You know," DeLeo said quietly after a couple of moments, meeting Esaax's gaze once more, "you really shouldn't give up on your talents just yet. And that's not the only thing you shouldn't give up on, either. You probably believe, like most people do, that humans are totally extinct. Just gone from the world forever. But what if I were to tell you—" He leaned over the desk toward Esaax for effect. "—that we're not?"

"…'We'?" The voice of one of the Evergray elders, reciting one of her favorite sayings, rang out in his memory: "_A fool fears he is wrong—a wise man fears he is _right_."_ Esaax had been regarding what his eyes had been telling him about DeLeo with skepticism, but now all those doubts were stepping aside, for DeLeo's last three words had been spoken _in a human language_.

Pointing a shaking hand at DeLeo and sounding much more accusatory than he'd intended, he blurted, "You're—"

"Human," DeLeo finished, continuing to use that human language. "Yep, that's right. But I'll bet you suspected it right from the start, though, didn't you?"

Esaax was almost completely overwhelmed by what the situation was giving him. There had to be some flaw about this creature, Esaax's mind insisted, something to prove that he was _not_ human, because he _couldn't_ be—especially, he felt, not when certain other humans had not been allowed to continue existing…

When Esaax managed to come up with potential evidence that DeLeo was not what he claimed, he pursued it right away. "You can understand me," he said. "And the glalie. Humans can't do that." Something else dawned on him, as well. "And you've been _speaking our languages_!" He wondered how in the world he had not realized it sooner. "How? You can't…" he spluttered.

"It's true," DeLeo said. "All my life, I've been able to talk to pokémon just like they do amongst themselves. Now I'm using that gift to help pokémon deal with their loss." Even now, speaking in the language of his own kind, there was a definite, unplaceable wrongness about DeLeo's voice. "I think that might just be the reason why I was spared," he said solemnly, "though I still don't have any idea as to _how_ I was spared. Still… the fact that I was spared gives me hope—hope that I'm not the only one and that maybe… well, maybe those who were lost don't have to _stay_ lost."

DeLeo opened a drawer in his desk then, and he began rummaging through its contents. "That's the real reason why I founded the Hope Institute," he said. "Not just for the pokémon who were left behind by the plague but for the _humans_, too. We're trying to find other survivors so we can help protect both them and any future generations of humanity… and we're also trying to find ways to _bring back_ the ones who didn't survive.

"And that's why I'm offering you this." DeLeo pulled a small, white box out from the drawer. From within it, he brought out a syringe, which he proceeded to fill with a pale blue fluid.

Esaax swallowed against the anxiety that built up in his throat at the sight of the needle. "What is that?" he asked nervously.

"It's a serum we've developed for pokémon who have abilities or powers that have been compromised or are just plain missing altogether due to birth defects, illness, elemental disruption, or any of a whole bunch of other causes. It restores those abilities and powers."

Esaax's eyes widened. "Then… you mean, it could strengthen me… and strengthen my power… so that it's not too weak anymore? So that it could be there for me when I need it, and… and I could finally, _really_ help people? And never let anyone down again?"

"Maybe," DeLeo responded. "I've gotta warn you, though: the serum is untested…"

"Then you can test it on me," Esaax said hoarsely but firmly.

DeLeo nodded and took Esaax's arm. Seconds later, the serum was coursing through Esaax's veins, while a single, silent vow repeated again and again behind the wobbuffet's eyes: _Never let anyone down again…_


	8. Phasing Forward, Looking Back

**Chapter 8 – Phasing Forward, Looking Back**

The doors to DeLeo's office opened, and the human ushered Esaax out.

Walking was requiring a bit more effort from Esaax than usual. His muscles were oddly tense, and his tail was flicking about restlessly. His bones, however, felt as though they could simply come apart and melt away. Esaax got the distinct feeling that he was starting to fall ill.

"Esaax!"

The voice from down the corridor drew Esaax's attention. He looked, and there was Jen, bounding toward him with much more energy than he'd seen the snorunt exhibit thus far.

"It's time to go," Jen said once he came to a stop. "I heard that you got to talk with Mr. DeLeo in private. You're _so_ lucky! So tell me, then, did you like it?"

"…It was something." That was all that Esaax could think to say under the current circumstances.

DeLeo smiled down at the snorunt. "It was great to meet your friend, Jen. And I think I managed to make a real breakthrough for his benefit. Thanks very much for bringing him."

Jen gave an enormous grin and even giggled a little, apparently made giddy by the fact that his actions had pleased the founder of his beloved Hope Institute. He bade the human farewell and led an increasingly pale Esaax away.

DeLeo watched them leave, working his tie between his fingers with something of a faraway look in his mahogany eyes. _It's gonna be all right, Esaax,_ he thought. _Soon you'll have your old life back. _Both of us _will…_

- o -

Esaax was riding back to Syr's house with Jen, and he was now genuinely sick. It felt like someone was rearranging his insides, and clumsily at that.

Jen noticed Esaax's condition at the next red light. "You don't look so good," he said.

"Nnnnrrrrrrr…" was Esaax's reply, and it was the last thing out of his mouth until he and Jen were a block away from Syr's house, when Esaax threw up over the side of the car.

"Oh dear," Jen said as he pulled into the driveway, then exited the vehicle to inspect the mess. "Guess you'll need to have that checked out… ewww…"

"Haven…" Esaax managed to croak out, "now…"

"Okay, okay, don't worry…" Jen said. He was about to get back into the car when the front door of the house opened. Syr slithered out and looked about ready to say something, but before the arbok could say a word, Esaax was violently sick again.

Syr shot a distressed look at the wobbuffet, and then at Jen. "When did he get so sick?" he demanded worriedly.

"Just minutes ago," the snorunt answered. "It just hit him out of nowhere."

"Haven…" Esaax groaned again.

Syr nodded. "Don't worry," he said, as much for his own benefit as for Esaax's, "we'll take you there right away." He leapt into the backseat, while Jen took his place behind the wheel. "Go. Now!" Syr commanded.

The three of them made a beeline for the Haven, with Esaax vomiting twice more and developing tremors along the way.

- o -

Forty-five minutes had passed since arriving at the Haven. Syr was coiled up in a waiting room, full of worry, anger, and a few choice words that he wanted to blast at the next person to enter the room.

Luckily he did no such thing, for the next person to walk in was Jen. The snorunt had just returned from getting the car washed. "Is he going to be all right?" Jen asked.

"I don't know yet. I'm still waiting for the nurse to come back." Syr's tail lashed in outright fury. "Those _idiots_! They _had_ to have seen this coming. Anything that happens to him is on _their_ heads!"

"I told you that they and their human medicine failed him," Jen said quietly.

"They didn't just fail him, Jen, they _betrayed_ him. And I'm telling you, they'd better not do it again this time. Either he walks out of here alive and well—_for real this time_—or so help me, I'll—"

Teresa entered the waiting room, and Syr shut up in a hurry. He forced himself into calmer body language and a more even tone of voice, managing to stay aware that unleashing the full brunt of his anger would only complicate things for both himself and Esaax.

"How is he?" Syr asked.

"He's stable, for now," Teresa responded. "He actually came right out of that fit almost as soon as we'd gotten a hold of him. He might still relapse, though; we'll need to keep him here until we can be sure of exactly what he's experiencing. He's in no hurry to leave anyway, trust me. He's almost too weak to move at all."

"So you still don't know what's wrong with him," Syr said.

"I'm afraid not," Teresa replied. "We still have some tests to run through, the results of which will hopefully give us the answers we're looking for. Unfortunately, that will take time. Even more unfortunately, all the signs so far seem to be pointing to something with which we're entirely unfamiliar."

"And why didn't you see this coming?" Syr demanded in a tone that was suddenly cold, unable to stop himself.

Teresa stared at him, looking almost appalled.

"You had him here just this morning," Syr pressed on. "You were supposed to be taking care of him, keeping an eye on his condition. It seems to me that you should have noticed this sickness setting in while he was in your care, and yet you didn't. So why in the _hell_ didn't you see this coming?"

Now Teresa looked thoroughly appalled. "Whatever Esaax's current malady is, it's completely unrelated to the condition for which he was initially brought here. He gave no indication whatsoever that he would fall ill like _this_ while he was in our care, and he was in excellent shape when we released him. There was _no way_ this could have been predicted!"

"Well, that's not all, though. What _about_ that psychic sickness that he was in here for to begin with, huh? I saw it. I saw that multicolored aura just hours ago, and he's been like the living dead ever since it appeared. How can you have thought it was all right to let him out when this sort of thing is still happening?"

Teresa's expression softened somewhat; she now looked more troubled than angry. "That aura never appeared even once during his time here. Adn's methods should have triggered it if it were still possible for it to be triggered."

"But they _didn't_," Syr spat. "I think I want to have a talk with this 'Adn' person. It sounds like they're the one who's gone and screwed things up here."

"I'm sorry, but he's not here at this time," Teresa said. "I will speak with him later, all right? In the meantime, please… I understand that you're worried for Esaax. I really do. I'm worried for him, too. I hate seeing him like this, especially so soon after it honestly seemed like he'd finally gotten through the last set of hardships life gave him. But losing your composure won't do him any good at all. It'll only get you removed from the premises—I'm sure you don't want that, and I don't want that, either. Esaax needs you to be here for him and hold it together. Okay?"

There was a moment's delay, but then Syr sighed, lowering his head guiltily. "You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. Just… please, take care of him. _Please_," he said, looking imploringly into Teresa's eyes.

"We'll do everything we can," Teresa assured him, then turned and left.

As Syr watched her go, he hoped dearly that everything that the Haven's staff could do would indeed be enough.

- o -

Lying in bed with his eyes closed, yet still partially awake, Esaax was still suffering the nauseous, ache-inducing effects of his mystery illness. Though miserable, he was about to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

He was almost disconnected from his senses enough in his current state to fail to notice the presence that entered his midst then, emerging from the wall just above his bed. A dark bluish-gray gengar now hovered over him, clutching a flat, black stone whose edges had a silvery sheen.

By the time Esaax's presently-compromised psychic senses realized that there was a potentially dangerous, partly ghost-type creature nearby, the gengar had already vanished from the scene. The stone, however, had not—Esaax opened his eyes in a delayed and imperfect state of primal alarm just in time to see it drop from the air and land right on his face.

He would have shouted in pain and surprise, but the moment that the stone made contact with his skin, he felt a massive jolt fire through his body that took his breath away. An instant later, it was gone and replaced by an extremely unpleasant feeling in his bones. It was a _stretching_ feeling, as if hands had seized each one of his extremities and both ends of his spine and were pulling on them as hard as they could. It genuinely felt as though every part of him were being stretched out of shape, as if his entire body were being forcibly and dramatically elongated.

There came a second shock, one much greater than the initial jolt that he'd received upon being hit with the stone, as Esaax realized in horror that it _was_.

- o -

Not far away, in a large puddle of recent rain, the reflection of a long, blue face gazed up at its owner: none other than Ntairow Fade, who was finally near the end of a very long search.

She had been forced by her clan's leadership to leave Esaax behind with the rest of the Evergray, but had never accepted the choice that they'd made for her. Ultimately, she had broken free from her clan with the aid of a few fellow Fade whom she'd successfully convinced of the injustice that she'd been dealt.

Soon after she'd escaped, something had come into the picture that had made her all the more glad that she was free to return to the Evergray and reunite with Esaax. That something appeared now as another blue reflection beside her own, resting on his long arms as he peered into the water with a large, perpetual smile.

"They're ready, Mother," the wynaut said.

He was her son, named Zerzekai. Tonight he was going to take part in the ritual of evolution—for about the fortieth time. Zerzekai seemed to have a fear of evolving despite how earnestly he wanted to evolve; as such, every single one of his "transforming" battles thus far had ended the same way: cold feet and only two of them.

"The question is, are _you_ ready?" Ntairow asked.

"Of _course_ I'm ready! I know you're gonna be proud of me if I do this, and I bet Father will be, too!"

"We will be proud of you no matter what," Ntairow assured him. "And your father's going to be absolutely delighted to finally meet you no matter what form you're in."

When she'd made it back to Evergray territory, she had been told that Esaax had left and was nowhere to be found. Upon learning this, she'd set out with her child in order to find him and bring him back to what she had thought of as her new clan ever since she'd first spent time with them.

"But we _already_ met! …Oh. No, we didn't. Not really…" Zerzekai reminded himself, sounding crestfallen.

The wynaut and his mother had made numerous return trips to the Blackthorn area in search of Esaax. On one occasion, while exploring and playing alone, Zerzekai had actually found him. He had realized almost as soon as he'd laid eyes and oculon upon Esaax that that wobbuffet was his father, but he had lost track of Esaax after running to tell Ntairow of his discovery.

"He should have recognized me," Zerzekai said, and not for the first time.

Ntairow shook her head. "Different people's senses don't always work in the same ways. You know that."

Differences in the way senses worked was a subject with which Ntairow had had a very personal sort of experience herself. Having already experienced a change in her own, she had chosen to subject them to another set of enhancing alterations in order to ultimately track down Esaax. She remembered that at the time, she'd found it oddly funny that she'd managed to find the fairly obscure thing that was required to provoke those changes so much more quickly and easily than she'd found Esaax, and she wondered if he would find that similarly amusing.

She also wondered how much it was going to take to convince him that she was indeed someone whom he'd known and loved before. Ntairow wanted to believe that it would be easy enough, but…

She loved the Evergray. She really did. Their laws were nowhere near as strict as those of the Fade. But there was a lot about not only the world outside their caverns but also about the secrets of their own kind that they had yet to learn. If, in his time outside of Evergray territory, Esaax hadn't learned that the course of action that she had taken in order to find him was even an option, she would have to enlighten him about it.

"We're ready whenever you are!" a voice called out from not too far away then. Its source was a linoone, next to whom there stood a zigzagoon.

"Go on, then, if you're ready," Ntairow told Zerzekai. "And remember: no matter how this turns out, we will both be proud of you."

With a smile that was huge, even for a wynaut, Zerzekai rushed over to the linoone and zigzagoon and allowed himself to be led toward a larger clearing by them. The latter would be the one whom Zerzekai would fight (and defeat—the two normal-types had agreed to Ntairow's request for the zigzagoon to throw the fight after having been paid handsomely in berries).

And after the battle, regardless of the outcome, they would go to reunite with Esaax. As a shout from the linoone signaled the start of the match, Ntairow found herself reminiscing about the last night that she'd spent with Esaax…

_FLASH!_

Ntairow's reverie was abruptly shattered by something that seemed to explode inside her head, something that tore through the image of Esaax that she was holding within her mind and caused that picture to warp and twist.

Ntairow's heart froze. "No… it's not possible," she whispered.

A horrid scream stabbed into her mind then—a psychic scream. It rose up, but then faltered and changed, distorted and corrupted in a way that could only have been achieved by…

"Dear Night, _no_!" Ntairow stood, reeling as she fought against the harsh brain-noise of the psybane that had so suddenly and impossibly blossomed into being. "_Don't follow_!" she then called out to Zerzekai. But she could only hope and pray that her son had heard her and would obey, for she was already running full tilt toward Esaax and the horror that was befalling him. She suffered all the while as she ran, trying but failing to bite back cries of pain and clutching her head in her hands—in all four of them.


	9. Altered States

**Chapter 9 – Altered States**

Esaax refused to believe it at first. _Wake up, wake up, _wake up_!_ he screamed silently, again and again. But in truth, he knew better. This was not a dream. There was no denying this new reality.

He'd shut his eyes to the sight of what was befalling him, wishing that he could just pretend it away. Now that he was fully convinced that he couldn't, a sort of morbid curiosity arose in him and soon compelled him to look again.

When he did, he saw the same thing that his eyes had last shown him before he'd closed them in horror: his body was in a process of stretching itself out of shape, giving off a somewhat dim white glow as it did so. He was now longer than the bed on which he lay rather than the other way around—and he was still growing.

This surreal warping of his body had confused and terrified Esaax more than it had actually hurt him up to this point, but now it made the shift from mere discomfort to sheer pain, starting when his head suddenly tore away from his shoulders in a single, violent jerk that threw him from the bed and onto the floor.

Esaax lay there in stunned bewilderment. His mind was almost frozen with fear, but his body was writhing and flailing in panic and agony. He vaguely wondered how he could possibly still be alive, since it had genuinely felt as though he had just been beheaded.

The answer was that his head was still attached, though distantly now. He had grown a very long neck. Its curvature allowed him a clear, complete view of the reshaping of his body from a distance, as if he were watching it happening to someone else.

Still, he didn't find the sight of his changes anywhere near as awful as the feeling of them—or the sound. There was an audible creaking and crunching as his face bulged outward into an almost saurian shape. There were snaps and pops as new vertebrae were added to his tail. There was a ripping sound as a meager coating of flesh raced to keep up with the rapidly elongating bones in his legs. There was the wet, sickening churning of altering organs, all the while accompanied by the violently hard pounding of his heart, every beat of which felt like brass knuckles to his sternum.

Pain exploded in his mouth, as well, as his original teeth were shattered by the sudden eruption of a new, more dangerous set: one row above and two below of curved, serrated teeth. At the same time, his eyes were stabbed straight through to his brain by something searing-hot that changed his vision.

Esaax then felt his hands seeming to tear themselves apart from within. He watched in horrified revulsion as they each split wide open, first at the knuckles and then off to one side, near the wrists. From the gashes, spindly, blood-soaked fingers began to emerge, four to each hand.

Esaax wanted to scream. He had been trying to all the while. But he was nearly breathless, and his voice would not come to his summons anyway. It was too consumed in its own changes to pay any heed to his urges to cry out in his suffering.

Finally, there came what struck him as the worst feeling of all, one that spread up through his now nearly eight-foot-long tail from the newly-formed bulb at its end that contained his pseudobrain. What made this sensation the worst was that it was not a pain but a seemingly impossible lack thereof. The part of him that should have been suffering the most was instead feeling nothing at all.

And furthermore, as he noted in fearful bewilderment, his new tail appeared to be _eyeless_… but then he learned that it actually wasn't. One by one, his new oculons opened in a ring around the bulb at the end of his tail, four in total.

Esaax's tail twitched suddenly, and slowly, _involuntarily_, the multisensory organ curled inward. It brought itself to bear before his eyes, locking on to the center of his forehead. In that moment, in the dead stare of his own tail, Esaax's heart seemed to stop, and he became as numb and still as a corpse. Then his tail and all of its senses came back to life, and with those senses, Esaax discovered an aspect of his new form that terrified him more than any other.

Right on cue, his voice returned. An unearthly roar tore its way out of him that was almost like two voices in one, simultaneously deep and piercing.

The rather weak light that had surrounded him finally gave out altogether then, and the moment that it did, the gengar who had entered the room earlier appeared once again, rising up through the floor on the opposite side of the bed from Esaax. No sooner had she fully emerged than she seemed to start melting back into the floor, her body losing definition as it rapidly dwindled, but she stopped shrinking once she was in what was her true form: that of a ditto by the name of Anomaly.

Anomaly flattened themself against the floor. As they did so, they extended part of their shapeless body in the form of two long, bright blue tendrils that were each almost as thin as a hair at the end. One of the tendrils reached out to grab the now spent evolutionary stone that lay a couple of feet away, while the other lashed out toward Esaax, who was now panicking, seemingly crazed.

Esaax's tail noticed the swiftly-approaching tendril and flicked toward it, but Esaax, apparently too absorbed in the fear and pain that still gripped him, gave no further reaction to it even as its end darted swiftly and briefly into the skin of one of his ankles.

The ditto withdrew both tendrils, letting the stone rest on the floor right in front of their face for a moment as they hurriedly transformed again, grabbing it once more as soon as a pair of white hands grew from their changing form.

The shape that Anomaly was taking was so familiar to them that they achieved it in no time. Where the ditto had sat mere seconds ago, the gardevoir known as Adn now crouched, but only for a moment before disappearing in a burst of golden light, leaving the Haven behind with no intentions of ever returning.

Almost immediately afterward, a small group of chansey nurses, drawn by the sounds of Esaax's screams, arrived at the scene to find the result of his unexpected evolution but nothing at all of its cause.

- o -

_Esaax floated, suspended in some strange, viscous medium. Though smotheringly hot, the gel that was wrapped around him was also comforting. He knew that it protected him as it held him fast._

_There were tubes entering his body from all sides. They fed substances into him that burned like the worst of all acids and brought pain to every part of him but also nourished him and gave him life. He was glad to have these lifelines snaking into him despite the hurt that they caused._

_Something appeared in the murky distance, moving toward Esaax with incredible speed and grace. Esaax distantly wondered how it could cut through the gel so effortlessly when he was held so firmly in place by the viscous substance. When the thing drew close enough, Esaax could see that it had the form of a huge, disembodied, four-fingered hand—or rather the shadow of such a hand._

_It closed around Esaax the moment that he was within range of its long, thin fingers. Its grip felt like being enveloped in icy water. The contrasting cold was sudden yet not terribly harsh. He soon came to regard it as a pleasant and quite soothing change after having been in such sweltering heat for so long. As the chill sank in deeper, it even started to dull away the acidic pain that had been flowing through him._

_The hand was snuffing out Esaax's suffering. It was also snuffing out his life. Little by little, he felt less and less. The coldness filled him completely and consumed his every feeling. And Esaax couldn't help thinking that it was fine to let this chill flush out his soul and leave him hollow so long as the pain was purged along with it._

_The dark hand began to carry Esaax away then, and Esaax found himself perfectly willing to let it do so. This new void that the shadow-hand offered was comforting. It was good, and it was right. It was where he belonged._

_Dragged ever further into the darkness, Esaax felt his nourishing lifelines start to break and pull out of him. Each one lost left him more unfeeling. It was good. It was right. It was…_

Wrong_! Suddenly panicked, Esaax fought against the tow of the dark hand, straining and thrashing in vain to escape the nothingness—_

—and succeeding instead in escaping his unconsciousness. His eyes opened, and he was instantly aware that he had been moved to another location. There was no bed here, and there was no door, either. There was barely any space at all, just enough to comfortably hold his large, spidery form. This room was nothing more than a place to contain him. It was just a box—or rather a _cage_, Esaax couldn't help but think: a cage with soft, padded walls rather than metal bars.

"Nicer than being in a pokéball, anyway," he thought aloud, and he was immediately surprised by the voice that he'd just produced. It was a rasping, guttural kind of voice, sounding somewhere between a hiss and a groan.

_I don't sound like that!_ Esaax thought fearfully, but the fact was that he now did. And oddly enough, he became bored of the new voice just as quickly as he'd been shocked by it. All at once, he found himself possessed of an attitude that was as if the new voice and all of the other aspects of his change were just as they had always been.

A movement to his right caught his attention then. His tail immediately focused on the source of the motion. A window that had been well-concealed opened there, and a familiar chansey's face was visible through its thick, reinforced glass.

Esaax pushed his torso up from the floor and got up onto his feet, standing at more than eight feet tall. His neck naturally curved forward and downward rather than straight upward, preventing him from having to duck more than just a little to avoid the ceiling.

Teresa watched him stand up, her expression unchanging as he aimed his eyes directly into hers. Her view of the large, blue pokémon was blurred every few seconds by the fog of his breath clouding the glass, giving Esaax an almost miragelike appearance.

"Esaax Evergray," Teresa addressed him.

Esaax turned his head. The room was soundproof. Teresa was speaking into a microphone, and her voice was reaching him through an unseen speaker that was somewhere behind him. Meanwhile, she listened through a speaker outside.

He turned back toward Teresa. "What?" he responded.

"You've evolved," Teresa said.

"Good eye," Esaax said blandly. He folded his arms and cocked his head at Teresa. The senses of his tail told him that she was not happy with him, but he found that he didn't really care. "So what of it?"

"I wasn't aware that multiple-stage evolution was possible in your species," Teresa said. "Do you know what you've evolved into?"

Esaax only stared at her in response. He hadn't been aware that wobbuffet could evolve, either. For a moment, he wondered just what it was that he'd become, vaguely annoyed at the fact that he didn't know, but soon came to decide that something else about his current situation was much more important.

"Why did you imprison me?" he demanded.

"Are you honestly saying you don't remember? Or are you just being a wiseguy again?" Teresa had a hard time disliking anyone, but this creature that Esaax had become—or more specifically, the attitude that apparently went along with the change—was starting to push it. "You exhibited threatening behavior. The nurses who found you following your evolution said that you tried to kick and bite them, so we sedated you and put you here."

At those words, Esaax wondered how long he'd been unconscious, but that moment of curiosity was as short-lived as the one that had preceded it. He gave an annoyed sigh. "I seriously don't remember doing any such thing," he said, "but if you insist that I _did_ do such a thing, well… sorry. Now, how about letting me out of here?"

"I don't think so," Teresa said. "You see, wobbuffet are incapable of direct violence. We don't know what else evolution might have made you capable of. So we're going to have to keep you in there until we've managed to figure you out. Oh, and by the way: if you've learned to use any beams or projectile attacks to compliment your new physical advantages, and you're considering using them to break out, don't bother. The room is elementproof."

"Huh. Well, could you at least be so kind as to get me something to eat? I'm starving in here." The cell that held Esaax blocked sounds but not scents. It wasn't until he smelled the chansey and tasted her scent of warmth and life and _flesh_ on the air that he realized just how hungry he was.

"All right. Just give us a few minutes, and we'll bring you something," Teresa assured him, her tone and expression softening somewhat.

"No," Esaax said. "I can't wait that long." He took a step back, then suddenly lunged forward, trying but failing to kick down the door. His jaws then snapped against the window, the sharp teeth scraping the glass again and again with a harsh screeching sound.

Teresa jumped back from Esaax's futile but nonetheless startling strike. She uncapped a hidden button on her microphone unit and pressed it. With a loud _hiss_, sleep powder sprayed forcefully into Esaax's cell from all directions. In a near-instant, the cell was filled with obscuring, bluish-white powder. Seconds later, vents and fans siphoned away the dust, and Esaax was revealed once more. He was completely subdued now, curled up on the floor.

Teresa sighed, gazing pityingly at Esaax. _I'll find a way to get through to you. I swear it,_ she said silently.

She then made her way to the waiting room and the arbok and snorunt therein. Once there, she explained the current situation to them. She then brought them to Esaax's cell and allowed them both to have a look at him.

"You honestly have no idea what he's become?" Syr quietly asked Teresa as he held a troubled stare upon Esaax.

"Not at the moment, no," Teresa answered. As she spoke, she flicked a switch on the microphone unit. The cell's small window and its view to the pokémon within were closed off once more. With a determined expression, Teresa turned to the others. "Come with me," she said. "We may be able to find out yet."


	10. Embracing the Predator

**Chapter 10 – Embracing the Predator**

"Can't you do this any faster?" Syr urged.

"Do you want this done in a hurry, or do you want it done right?" Madeline asked crossly.

"But—"

"Just keep your skin on, purple man!" the mr. mime snapped.

Teresa, Syr, and Jen had fetched Madeline, and after briefing her on what had transpired regarding Esaax, they'd gone with her to access the Haven's pokémon database. In addition to being the first hospital designed to admit treat both humans and pokémon, the Haven had also been a very active center of pokémon research. Here, an immense volume and spectrum of pokémon-related data from all over the world was compiled.

Therefore it was quite odd, not to mention very frustrating for Madeline and those who were gathered there with her, when minute after minute of the mr. mime's work (which, Syr's impatience aside, was truthfully very speedy) continued to yield nothing on the subject of wobbuffet evolution.

"It must be super-obscure or else we'd have it already," Madeline said.

"Keep looking," Teresa directed her.

Madeline did not pause, her fingers continuing to fly over the keys. Meanwhile, she shivered and said, "_Brrr_. Is it just me, or did it just get really cold in here all of a sudden?"

"Yes, it is colder in here…" Teresa was well-insulated against the elements, but she'd noticed the chill, too. She cast a questioning glance at Jen. The snorunt caught her eye and suddenly looked as though he'd been caught robbing the cookie jar. Uttering a small, embarrassed noise, Jen made a hasty exit.

"He didn't have to leave…" said Madeline, who was too busy to sound as sorry for Jen as she felt. She continued her search, her brow knitted in hard focus. Finally, "_Argh_."

"'Argh'?" Syr echoed in puzzlement.

"Yes, argh. That's everything," Madeline said. "Nothing in here at all about wobbuffet being able to evolve. It can't even _conceive_ of such a thing."

"Then he must have become an entirely new form of pokémon," said Syr.

"I don't think so," Teresa said. "We'd thought that wobbuffet were unable to evolve, but this proves that they actually are. They've probably always been able to—it just seems too unlikely that this is the first time that this has happened. There's got to be a precedent."

"Well, if there is, it should be in here, but it's not," said Madeline. "We've got just about the most complete recorded history of pokémon you could ask for here. That includes some very obscure and unusual information, some of which is thousands of years old. So I seriously doubt that the absence of any information about wobbuffet evolving is just an oversight."

_Obscure and unusual information…_

Thousands of years old… 

"Karo," Syr all but whispered, wondering why he hadn't thought of this sooner. The arbok made for the door, rushing past the other two pokémon in the room.

"What are you doing?" Teresa asked, startled by Syr's sudden action.

"Plan B," Syr said. "Stay; I'll be right back." With no further explanation, he left the Haven and set off down the street.

- o -

After traveling a short distance southward, Syr came to a three-story house in the part of town where the more expensive homes stood. This was the residence of Ekunasic Karo.

Karo was a nosepass, aged 6,731 years, which among his kind was still quite young. He had once belonged to the gym leader Ren Bridges of the Apex League: the gyms open only to elite trainers. Following the Extinction, Karo was no longer bound by his rather demanding gym duties and left with little to do aside from the maintenance of his trainer's house. He was thereby given the time to acquire quite a few new friends, whom he would occasionally invite over to admire his eccentric trainer's collection of the rare, the unique, and the obscure.

Syr was included among those few. However, he had not spoken to or even seen Karo in over a year. He'd somewhat recently asked one of Karo's other friends what the nosepass might be up to, and the answer given was that Karo had decided to go to sleep.

Therein lay the potential problem with Syr's idea: nosepass could sleep indefinitely and were profoundly difficult to wake. If Karo was still sleeping…

Syr knew that he'd just have to find out whether or not that was the case and deal with the situation as it unfolded. He made his slithering approach up the walkway. Right away, he found something amiss: the door was unlocked and ajar. He knew that Karo would have had someone coming over periodically to take care of things while he slept, but he doubted that any of Karo's housesitters would have so carelessly left the door open.

Cautiously, Syr slipped through the door, not knowing for certain what he would find. He nudged the lightswitch that was just inside with his nose. In spite of the suspicious front that the situation had already presented, Syr was nonetheless shocked by what he saw.

A number of hanging lights illuminated a scene of chaos. Trinkets and artifacts were scattered and broken all about. Furniture was upended, disarrayed, and ruined. On top of that, the walls, floor, ceiling, and every other surface in sight was covered in three different colors of what was unmistakably smeargle graffiti—as was the nosepass in the middle of the room, who was just obliviously sitting there like the big rock that he was.

Syr slithered over to Karo. The nosepass had obviously not been up and around during the invasion of his home. Even now, he remained more still and inanimate than seemed possible, even for a rock-type. It made Syr wonder if Karo wasn't more than just very deeply asleep.

Concerned, Syr pressed his head against the stone surface of Karo's body. He was able to hear _something_ going on in there, working out an undeniable rhythm, albeit a very slow one.

Having confirmed that the nosepass was still alive, Syr now faced the daunting task of waking him. He tried shouting at Karo. He tried pushing and prodding at him. He even poked Karo in the eye, but still the nosepass kept snoozing on.

Syr was quickly losing patience and getting desperate. He was on the verge of finding out whether or not Karo would respond to having something shoved up his huge, honking nose. Then he spotted something potentially useful in the corner.

It was a fairly large mace, which had caught Syr's eye when light had glinted off of its surface. It was the only metal object in the entire room, though clearly not of a kind of metal that would be attracted by Karo's magnetism; otherwise, the "up-the-nose" question would likely have answered itself.

Syr went over and lifted the mace with his tail. The weapon was good and heavy. _This ought to do it,_ he thought. He returned to Karo, swung the mace high, and struck the side of the nosepass's face.

Nothing happened.

Syr tried striking Karo a bit harder, this time hitting him just below his massive nose, but still Karo would not awaken.

Fairly frustrated now, Syr gathered all his strength and then some, raising the mace as high overhead as he could. With a loud yell, Syr brought the mace crashing down one last time, dead center into Karo's forehead.

_Crack!_

There was a small explosion of gray dust. When it cleared, Syr saw that he had opened a long, shallow fissure in Karo's head, splitting it like a melon.

Syr stared horrorstruck at the damage for a moment, afraid that he might have just killed Karo, but then a groan issued from the nosepass. Karo rocked back and forth briefly on his short legs, then tilted backward and held that position, seeming to gaze up unsteadily at Syr.

Then, without warning, the nosepass lunged forward. Syr flung himself out of the way just as Karo's pointed nose punched a large hole in the floor right where the arbok had been seconds before.

Syr kept himself at a distance as Karo righted himself once more. "Karo, it's me!" Syr shouted, but it was of no use. The nosepass was still fast asleep, with his cognitive faculties compromised further by the blow that he'd suffered to his head.

Concerned that Karo might charge at him again, Syr tried to move out of the way. Much to his alarm, however, he found himself completely immobilized as if he were caught in an invisible vice. _When did __he use block on me?_ Syr wondered, bewildered. He could do nothing but stare as Karo followed up with lock-on, his huge nose glowing as it brought itself to bear on the arbok.

Syr knew what was coming next, and he was not looking forward to it at all. He knew that he had to get Karo back to his senses… but if cracking the nosepass's head open could not awaken him completely, then what could? At any rate, Syr was not keen on being on the receiving end of an electric blast if he could help it at all. He prepared to use acid, but found to his shock that he couldn't even get his jaws open. _Damn, that's a good block!_ Syr remarked silently as he was forced to swallow his own acid attack, leaving a sickening, burning sensation in his stomach.

An ominous hum resonated through the room, and the air tingled with electricity. Karo was about to unleash a zap cannon. Knowing that he could not escape, Syr shut his eyes in dread and braced himself…

_ZZZAP!_

When stars stopped exploding in Syr's brain, he found that he was lying on his side; the block that had held been holding him in position had apparently been diverted to something else, though to what or why, Syr couldn't imagine. Filling almost his entire view was one of Karo's big, stumpy feet.

Syr tried to bolt away, but the zap cannon attack had rendered him almost thoroughly paralyzed, his body now devoid of sensation and largely unresponsive. He was utterly helpless if Karo opted to crush his skull with that stone foot in his not-quite-conscious rampage.

Instead of attacking again, however, Karo spoke to him. He seemed to be much more awake now, but he still sounded rather dazed. "Hey, Syr. Man, I don't know what's been going on… was I sleepwalking?"

"No, you were sleep-_zapping_," Syr said crossly, struggling slightly to speak due to his numbed mouth.

"What?" Karo was apparently still coming to some of his senses and not having a particularly easy time doing so. "Aw… dude, I am so sorry… did I really?"

"Yes, you did."

"I am so sorry," Karo said again. He slowly became aware of his surroundings. "Aw, no, I didn't do all of _this_, did I?"

"No, it was some smeargle. They came in and trashed the place, marked all over everything. Including you."

"When?" Karo demanded.

"I have no clue," Syr responded.

"Hmmph. Yeah, it was smeargle, all right. Look at this mess…" The nosepass meandered around the house, surveying the vandalism and groaning ever louder as he stumbled upon more and more damage. At some point, he apparently came across his own reflection somewhere; "Aw, crap, they _did_ mark me!" he shouted. "How'd they put this crack in my head, though?"

"They didn't. I did, and I was just trying to wake you up. Does it hurt?" Syr asked in concern.

"No, not really," Karo replied. He came back into the room where Syr still lay immobilized. The hole that he'd made in the floor caught and held his attention. "Who did this?"

"That would be you and your massive _nose_."

"Huh." Karo actually sounded as if he were impressed with himself at this news.

Syr was not impressed. Rather, he was quite annoyed. "Haven't you noticed that I am _paralyzed_ here?"

"Whoa… Yeah, you are, aren't you? But that's okay, cause Ren always keeps a good supply of dried cheri berries around—"

"Gee, I wonder why?" Syr muttered.

"That's assuming those idiot mammals didn't get into them," Karo finished, ignoring Syr's comment. "I'll go get… _oh_. I forgot—they're in the kitchen," he groaned. "I can't go in there…"

"And _why_ can't you go in there, exactly?" Syr demanded.

"Fridge."

It took a moment for Syr to make sense of that. The arbok then noticed that Karo was heading for the front door. "Wait, where are you going?"

"I'm gonna get help from across the street," Karo answered as he opened the door and began to step out. "Don't move." He stopped in his tracks as he realized that he'd just said that to someone who was presently almost completely paralyzed. Then he burst out into his loud, honking brand of laughter, which was still audible long after he'd shut the door and left.

Syr just lay there on the floor, seething with annoyance and worry at how much time this misadventure was costing him.

- o -

Teresa leaned against the office door, the tip of her tail flicking about restlessly. Whatever Syr had gone to do, she hadn't expected him to take _this_ long about it. It was beginning to look as though Syr's search for answers would prove as fruitless as Madeline's had.

"Might as well look in on Esaax again," the chansey said wearily. "I imagine he's still asleep in there, though…"

Madeline turned in her seat to face Teresa. "Do you think maybe I could…?" She was fluttering her fingers and wearing a self-betraying smile.

Teresa looked her in the eyes, wearing an amused expression. Before she could say anything in response, however, the door was flung open. Teresa was catapulted onto the floor, where she rolled for a short distance before she was able to pick herself back up again.

Regarding the sticky remnants of the now shattered egg in her belly pouch with severe annoyance, the chansey readied an angry glare for whomever was making their entrance. As it turned out, it was Jen who stepped into the room. Before Teresa could chew him out, though, words came tumbling out of his mouth at maximum volume, completely unintelligible.

"Say that again. And breathe this time," Teresa said, seizing the snorunt by his shoulders.

"There's-someone-at-the-front-door-and-I-don't-kno w-who-or-what-she-is-but-she's-here-to-see-Esaax-a nd-she's-really-freaked-out-and—" Jen very nearly passed out right then and there.

"I thought I told you to breathe," Teresa said. "Thank you for letting me know about that, Jen. Now please go sit down and relax somewhere before your heart explodes."

Teresa went over to the desk upon which she'd set down the microphone unit for Esaax's cell, retrieved the device, and handed it to Madeline. "If he's up, you can tell him he has another visitor. But if he's not, don't wake him."

The chansey left the room, with Jen tottering woozily behind. Madeline watched them go, then set out herself in a bit of a rush.

Esaax had been placed in a part of the Haven that was rarely used, usually deserted, and far removed from the greater population of the hospital. This meant a bit of a walk for Madeline, but it was more than worth it as far as she was concerned.

Eventually, she found herself standing before Esaax's cell. She hit the switch on the microphone unit controlling the window, and once the window had opened, she peered through it eagerly. The dim light fed into the room at all times revealed that Esaax was still sleeping, his slender, spidery body curled up on the floor.

Madeline marveled at the sight before her, impressed with Esaax's new form beyond even her own expectations. _If only he were awake,_ she wished silently, _then I could see him _in action…

The mr. mime began to turn away, sighing in disappointment. Then she thought she saw something moving out of the corner of her eye. Turning back, she saw something long, black, and bearing a ring of eyes appear in the window, searching about like a periscope. Rising up from the floor after it came Esaax's new, saurian face.

Madeline switched on the microphone and speaker in a hurry. "Aww, did you wake up just for me?" she asked.

"No," Esaax croaked. Madeline wilted in mock embarrassment. "I wasn't asleep," the kwazai added.

"You weren't?"

"I was faking it the whole time."

"Faking it, huh?" Madeline echoed skeptically. "What about the sleep powder Teresa blasted in there?"

Esaax smirked. A lime-green aura briefly shimmered around him.

_Safeguard…_ Madeline just stared at him, her mouth hanging slightly open. She wondered how he had managed to activate that defensive aura without Teresa noticing it.

She continued to watch Esaax through the window, and he gazed right back at her almost… _longingly_… Madeline felt her mouth go dry. _Could it be… does he really…?_ she wondered.

"You… you really do understand the way I feel about you, don't you?" she asked, her pulse quickening.

Esaax merely blinked at her, pressing his vaguely smiling muzzle against the glass.

Whether that was a "yes", a "no", or anything in between was utterly irrelevant to Madeline; she had already made up her mind. She threw a glance over her shoulder at the security camera that looked down upon them. It, like all the rest of the Haven's cameras, had gone out of order a couple of days prior and had still not been repaired, but she still had an odd, fleeting notion that she should perhaps disable it telekinetically.

She decided against tampering with the camera, however, and instead turned her attention back toward another device. She uncapped a tiny green button on the microphone unit and allowed her finger to hover very briefly over it before pushing it. There was a faint tone. Then, smoothly and almost silently, the door to Esaax's cell slid open.

The gangly shape within stirred, framed in soft light and looking ghostly. Esaax lurched forward and emerged from his cell, bowing his already low-slung head even further as he passed through the doorway. Now that he was no longer contained, he seemed much larger than he had appeared to be while within his cell, and there was something about him that affected Madeline in a way that she hadn't anticipated, something that her psychic centers were beginning to react to in a primal and increasingly uneasy way.

Esaax moved toward Madeline with slow, graceful steps. He loomed over her, twice her height. He drew an incredibly long, deep breath, his broad chest swelling immensely. A long, red tongue flitted quickly across his lips.

Madeline looked up at Esaax with an expression of awe, struggling to breathe more calmly and to stop trembling so much. Bringing a smile to her face that seemed unusually hesitant to form, she reached for one of his massive hands.

The spidery, blue fingers closed over Madeline's own with an iron grip. It was all she could do not to yelp in pain.

Esaax moved even closer and lowered his head, his face just inches from Madeline's. His lips drew back, baring his jagged teeth. He began caressing her face with his muzzle, drawing short, panting breaths, taking in her scent.

Madeline felt a wave of revulsion wash over her. This was not the experience with Esaax about which she'd fantasized so many times. He was starting to scare her, and not only by his behavior alone—the discomfort in her psychic centers that his mere presence seemed to cause was still growing and was strong and distinct enough now that she recognized its warning for what it was: _He's a dark-type now._

Nonetheless, she forced herself to look at him directly, trying as hard as she could to not appear as unsettled as she felt. She thought, or at least hoped, that perhaps if she could continue to treat him with affection, he would snap out of this disturbing phase and treat her more pleasantly.

She sent her other hand up to touch the kwazai's face, caressing it with fingers that shook in spite of her efforts to prevent such. His skin was rubbery and quite smooth. She found it pleasant to the touch, and she tried to focus on how nice it felt rather than on the fear that was steadily overtaking her. It began to work, too. But then Esaax's head suddenly moved with surprising speed, the jaws snapping harshly. His serrated teeth sank deeply into the meager flesh of her arm.

Madeline screamed in pain. All the love that she'd had for Esaax was gone from her mind now, replaced by pure, primal terror. Knowing that she currently had access to no attacks that could do him any harm and aware that she would likely just get them thrown right back at her at twice the power if she did have any, she tried desperately to free herself from him, but to no avail. Her escape was foiled soundly, not only by Esaax's sheer physical strength but also by the dark gray aura that flared into being around both pokémon at her attempt to escape, signaling that Esaax had retained his shadow tag ability.

Esaax worried Madeline's arm in his jaws with shredding teeth and sharp, jerking movements of his neck until the appendage was torn away at the elbow, gruesomely freeing one side of her, drawing more cries of agony. His left hand clutched her right hand even more tightly, and there were several sickening cracks as the bones in his grip yielded to the pressure. His other hand shot forward and slammed into her chest, pinning her to the wall.

Now struggling to breathe, Madeline stared through eyes blurred with tears at the empty space where half of her arm had once been. Then, fearfully, she looked up at Esaax once more. His head was already raised for another strike. Her blood dripped slowly and thickly from his jaws, and she glimpsed a couple of her own fingers protruding from between his teeth before they, along with the rest of her severed limb, disappeared into his mouth and down his very long throat.

It was in that moment that Esaax became aware of something new. He had discovered the presence of a power within him into which he had not yet tapped. He summoned it forth, and it rose up through his spine, radiated out through one arm, and gathered in his hand.

Esaax went ahead and released Madeline, letting her slump to the floor in her wavering consciousness, knowing that she couldn't escape anyway. He gazed at his hand with curiosity. Energy in a shade of black that he'd never seen before danced in a slow vortex around it with a glow that was intensifying by the second.

He drew that arm back as if he were working an invisible bow. All of his senses focused fully on the bleeding, shaking mr. mime before him. His concentration became heightened to its maximum acuteness. At this range, it was virtually unnecessary to take aim, but he nonetheless sought out the most lethal trajectory for his new weapon.

His arm thrust forward. With a loud, hollow sound, a glowing black beam of incredible intensity exploded from his hand, blasting Madeline point-blank.

At the exact moment that the beam struck Madeline, a horrible, sudden pain hit Esaax like a wrecking ball, taking his breath away. Red light exploded in his vision. His nerves seared excruciatingly for what felt like innumerable seconds, and his head felt as though it were blowing itself apart.

In his suffering, Esaax staggered and fell to the floor. When he rose once more, his mind surfaced from the altered state that it had been in for nearly the entire duration of the time since he'd evolved.

His vision returned in the next moment. He saw blood before him, as well as something black and twisted—_a corpse_. Something—_someone_—who, mere moments ago, had been alive—_until he had killed her_.

Esaax recoiled with a scream, suddenly frantic to be as far away from the scene as possible. His stomach violently expelled its contents. His renewed clarity wouldn't let him delude himself into believing that this was a nightmare or a hallucination. The scene before his eyes unflinchingly spoke the truth: he had murdered this pokémon. He had tasted her blood. He had eaten her flesh…

A howl of anguish and horror tore its way out through his throat. With fear, confusion, and disgust like none that he had ever known, all directed straight toward himself, Esaax brought his newfound technique to bear on the wall, letting it linger there until a large area of the wall had turned black and disintegrated, and then fled into the night.


	11. The Vault

**Chapter 11 – The Vault**

Karo returned just a short while after he'd left. He was accompanied by Breanna, a granbull from across the street, who fetched the dried cheri berries from Karo's kitchen and administered them to Syr. She also provided a couple of sitrus berries from her own cupboard for the nosepass's injury.

Syr had never watched Karo eat before. After finally doing so, the arbok decided that he would never watch it happen again if he could help it.

The granbull even helped to rid Karo of the graffiti that had been inflicted upon him. Unfortunately, though, not all of it came off.

After the granbull left, Syr explained to Karo what had happened to Esaax at the Haven. He then asked the nosepass if he possessed any information about the evolved form of wobbuffet.

Karo gave Syr an odd, sly look. He beckoned the arbok to a closet that, when opened, appeared to contain nothing other than an obscene message scrawled in yellow smeargle ink. Then Karo uttered a harsh, trilling sound, and the closet's back wall split open to reveal another, larger room.

"After you," Karo said, ushering Syr into the hidden room before entering it himself.

Syr wasn't surprised by the secret room; this wasn't the first time that Karo had shown it to him. He also wasn't surprised when he felt the room begin to make a descent. He knew that it was actually an elevator, having ridden it several times.

He was, however, a bit surprised to be riding it on this particular occasion. He had hoped that Karo would be able to provide some information about what Esaax had become but had not really expected him to be able to do so. "I take it this means you _do_ know something about what wobbuffet evolve into?" he asked.

"You could say that." The elevator came to a stop. "Now, you're not gonna find one _hair_ of smeargle in here," Karo said, snorting grumpily. "Stupid furballs, scribbling their filth—I'd like to show _them_ who likes to eat their own…"

Syr and Karo exited the elevator and entered what Ren had dubbed the Vault. It was a large room that had been the home of all of Ren's most valued possessions. Just as Karo had predicted, it was completely free of any signs of intrusion by smeargle.

The Vault contained more books than anything else, which were arranged on towering bookcases that lined the wall directly in front of Syr as well as those off to either side. Syr's gaze swept over the vast book collection. "Which of these has the information we want?" he asked.

"Never mind them," Karo said, making his way further into the room. "I kinda got the impression that you're in a hurry—" Syr made an exasperated noise at this, with the face to match. "—so, for the sake of time, just watch the screen."

The screen to which Karo was referring was mounted next to the elevator doors and covered a sizable portion of the wall. Syr slithered over to Karo, who then produced a deep and very resonant sound. The overhead lights turned off, and the screen before Syr and Karo came awake with light.

"Number thirty-nine," Karo said. Words and symbols flashed briefly on the screen, and then a film began to play…

_A pokémon battle was about to commence in a gym that was lit by glowing, pale green crystals—the Exo Gym. The walls were decorated with carved figures of pokémon over a softly glowing background of shifting colors. The floor was covered by an equally colorful mosaic depicting planets, comets, and stars._

_Ren sat on one side of the arena in a dark-colored, metal chair. The strange lighting and the camera angle didn't allow for a very detailed examination of his appearance, revealing only that he was slight of build, completely bald, and dressed in simple, entirely black attire._

_Opposite him, his challenger was seated in a chair like his own. The camera revealed somewhat more of the challenger's appearance than Ren's. Like him, she wore dark clothing, deep blue denim for her jacket and pants and black for the rest of her outfit. Unlike him, she had hair: dark, unkempt, and reaching down past her shoulders._

_"You're sure you want to do this the straightforward way?" the gym leader said in his sly-sounding, slightly lilting voice. "The special features of my gym do exist solely out of consideration for the challenger."_

_"Thanks, but I came here to battle a gym leader, not a gentleman," responded the challenger in a low, cackling voice._

_Ren gave a short laugh. "Out with it, then!"_

_The challenger produced a nest ball. "Go, Alain!"_

_With a burst of light, an alakazam appeared. Alain gazed intensely at the gym leader, holding both of his spoons in one hand while thoughtfully stroking his long whiskers with the other._

_"Oh, that's _nice_…"_ _Ren remarked. "Very nice. A shame, really, considering… oh well. Acheron? Could you step forward, please?"_

_There was no pokéball of any kind thrown, no flash or sparkle of light to herald the entrance of Ren's pokémon. Instead, the summoned creature emerged from the shadows at Ren's side. Rays of pale green light fell upon Acheron, revealing the form of…_

"Okay, Syr, is _that_ what you saw?" Karo asked.

"Yes. Yes, it is," Syr answered almost breathlessly. The arbok could barely believe his eyes, but the sight they presented told the truth: whatever Esaax now was, Acheron was the exact same thing.

Syr returned his attention to the footage, watching the commencement of the battle between Alain and Acheron.

_In the Exo Gym, as well as every other gym in the Apex League, the trainers were not allowed to issue __commands to their pokémon. Ren and his challenger had to merely sit back and watch their pokémon carry out the battle on their own terms._

_Sensing the presence of the dark element within his opponent, Alain knew that his psychic attacks were of no use in this match. He furthermore identified Acheron by sight as having once been a wobbuffet; as such, Alain knew that he risked doing more harm to himself than to Acheron in attacking him._

_Alain quickly formulated a plan to get around that risk, however. He transferred one of his spoons to the other hand, then summoned one of the techniques that he had inherited from his medicham father. The air around the alakazam crackled with electricity, and miniature bolts of lightning began a frenzied dance around one of his hands._

_Acheron, meanwhile, stood calmly on the other side of the arena, his long tail waving as he looked upon his opponent with a faint smirk. Alain surged forward and leapt high into the air, his psychic power allowing him to hover momentarily over the head of his eight-foot-tall opponent before slamming his thunderpunch into the back of Acheron's neck._

_Small tremors rippled through Acheron's body as electricity briefly coursed through him, but he kept silent and showed no visible signs that the thunderpunch had caused him any actual pain—that is, until he caused an orange aura to blaze into being around himself, sending the alakazam flying with the force of his counter attack._

_Grunting at the pain of the retaliatory strike, Alain telekinetically righted himself in midair and looked intently at Acheron, hoping to see evidence that he'd successfully paralyzed him—the less pain Acheron could feel, the less he could inflict, Alain reckoned. Acheron's tail was waving back and forth just as fluidly as it had been before he'd taken the thunderpunch, however, and his legs were steady beneath him._

_Accepting this, Alain lowered himself back down to the ground and implemented the other aspect of his plan, hoping that it, at least, _would _work on the first try. He transferred his other spoon back into his empty hand, and then a dull red glow filled his eyes. A ball of energy in the same color gathered between his spoons and then fired forth at Acheron, bursting into jagged red streaks that snaked over his entire body on impact. The streaks gave a single red flash, then turned black and vanished into Acheron's skin. Alain smiled at this—Acheron's counter technique had been successfully disabled._

_Acheron regarded this new development without any concern—he hadn't been planning on relying solely on that technique and knew that he could do just fine without it. He shut his eyes, allowing his mind to sink into a deep meditation._

_Alain wasted no time in launching more attempts to paralyze his opponent, hoping to succeed in that endeavor before the effects of his disable technique wore off. The Exo Gym was filled with the crackling sounds of electric power as he delivered three more thunderpunches in quick succession, to all of which Acheron gave no more reaction than he had to the first._

_Alain then moved back from him, once again checking to see if Acheron was showing any signs of paralysis. Acheron's skin was blistered and raw at the site of each thunderpunch's impact, and he reeked of charred flesh and trembled on the spot._

_Those tremors subsided very quickly, however, and the moment they did, Acheron's body suddenly took __on a bright red glow. The light expanded outward in a bide attack, forming a shockwave that knocked Alain off his feet and blasted him clear across the arena—he was almost sent flying right into his trainer's face._

_Acheron grinned as he watched the alakazam on the other side of the arena struggle to catch his breath and get back onto his feet, greatly weakened now. This, Acheron decided, was a good time to bring out the big guns—as weak as his opponent now was, he might only have to do it once. Besides which, he figured he'd played around with him long enough._

_He allowed a dark-type charge to build around one hand, seeing a faint, off-white glow surround Alain as he did so. The alakazam was trying to heal himself via the recover technique—but too late. No sooner had his injuries begun to repair themselves than a black beam came roaring forth from Acheron's hand and struck him. Alain screamed in agony—and curiously, so did Acheron._

_The attack ceased. Alain, covered from head to toe in black scorch marks, twitched briefly before falling unconscious and still. Acheron fell to his knees, still voicing his pain in the wake of the last attack that he'd launched, but he remained conscious. The match was over. The challenger had lost._

"So that's it, then," Syr stated, knowing that the Exo Gym allowed only one pokémon to each competitor.

"Yeah, that's it. But don't feel too bad for her. She may have lost the match, but," Karo said with a chuckle, "she won _him_."

Syr watched as Alain's trainer first recalled her pokémon into the nest ball and then rushed into the arena to the aid of the moaning blue pokémon there—the very same pokémon who had just denied her a victory in this gym. Syr could just make out the expression of wonder that was forming on Ren's face, and a realization hit him. "You mean, that's _her_?"

"You guessed it," Karo confirmed. "She made an enormous impression on Ren there in that gym on that day. And the rest is history." He smirked insofar as he could with a face that was comprised of a nose and not much else. "Let's give them some privacy," he then said. He produced the same low sound that he had used to activate the video screen, and the screen was returned to blankness.

"So… that creature… what _was_ that?" Syr asked.

"That," Karo said, "was a kwazai."

"Kwazai…" Syr echoed. "And that last attack he used…" Syr had never seen anything like it before, especially not from any creature bearing any relation to a wobbuffet. This was no retaliatory technique—Acheron had attacked proactively, something that wobbuffet were unable to do. Apparently evolution freed the species from that restriction. "What in the world was _that_?"

"That would be reflux," Karo answered. "It's a dark-type attack, and it's one of the nastiest ones there is, too."

"Does this mean that kwazai are dark-types?" Syr asked.

"Only half that. Psychic/dark-type, to be specific. But that's only the males. The females, now, they're another thing altogether…"

"What?"

"Yeah. Males evolve one way, and females evolve another," Karo explained.

"Just how much _do_ you know about kwazai?" Syr asked, astounded.

"Meh… pretty good amount, I guess…" Karo replied nonchalantly.

"That does it. You're coming with me!"

- o -

Syr and Karo arrived shortly thereafter at the Haven. Once through the doors, they were immediately greeted by a scene that neither of them had expected to find.

Teresa was unloading a small bundle of assorted medicines when she noticed the presence of the arbok and the nosepass. "Oh good, you're finally back!" she said.

But neither Syr nor Karo really heard her, particularly not Syr. This was because the two of them had noticed the tall, blue figure lying on its side on a bench near where Teresa was busily sifting through her portable remedies.

Syr moved closer to the unknown being. He was almost completely certain that this pokémon, with its blue skin and its black tail that held a presently-closed oculon in each of its four branches, bore some relation to the species of wynaut and wobbuffet. He turned to Karo for verification. "Is that…?"

"Kwazai, female," Karo confirmed. "Yeah, I wish I'd had time to show you _that_ video—you'd have liked Demi, man, you really would've…"

Teresa came to stand with them, carrying a spray-bottle of potion and a faintly glowing, coral-colored revive crystal. "Karo, I presume?" she asked of the nosepass. Karo responded affirmatively with a small grunt and an action that would have been a nod if he had possessed a neck.

"Can you tell us what happened here?" Syr asked Teresa.

"Well, she showed up here and managed to let me know that she was looking for Esaax, but something was driving her madder by the second. There seemed to be no calming her. And when we tried to restrain her, she started psywaving everything in sight before screaming bloody murder and passing out. Unfortunately, one of those psywaves did hit Jen…"

"_What_?" Syr said, instantly worried.

"He's not hurt," Teresa assured him. "The poor kid's just had his brain scrambled a little bit. He got so dizzy that he just tipped right over and hasn't been able to get back onto his feet yet. But other than that, no damage done. He'll be just fine soon. I put him right over there," she added, pointing. "You can see for yourself."

She was indicating a chair off in the corner, in which the snorunt was lying with his eyes half-closed. Syr, distracted by the kwazai, hadn't even seen him there. He slithered over to Jen. "How are you feeling?" he asked concernedly. Jen only groaned softly, rolled over, and turned his back on Syr in response.

"Best not to stimulate him in any way right now if you'd rather he didn't throw up," Teresa said.

She took the revive and held it against the kwazai's forehead. The crystal's glow intensified for a moment, then ceased entirely, leaving the spent crystal darkened inside like a burned-out lightbulb. The kwazai stirred slightly and gave a soft moan, revealing the first, faintest signs of returning consciousness. Teresa then set about spraying potion over a series of scrapes and bruises covering the kwazai's arms; the wounds began quickly fading away at once. "Poor thing. She must have taken a nasty spill on the way here," the chansey said.

"Who is she?" Syr wondered aloud as he gazed down at the kwazai. "Did you manage to get any personal information out of her before she passed out?"

"I tried to get her name," Teresa said, "and I think I succeeded. It sounded like 'Intro'…"

"Ntairow."

Teresa's attention turned to the kwazai, as did that of the others. "What?"

"It's N-_tair_-row." The kwazai's voice was breathy and lilting. She also sounded rather groggy at the moment—she was still in the process of waking up. "Is that all you want to know?"

Teresa opened her mouth to answer, but before she could get a single word out, she was interrupted by another chansey, one who was bawling her eyes out as she came barreling in. The new arrival just barely managed to come to a halt in front of Teresa in time to avoid colliding with her.

"Rebecca, what is it?" Teresa asked of the other chansey, clearly alarmed.

Rebecca tried to speak, but then froze, her mouth hanging halfway open as she stood paralyzed by some unknown horror. Finally, she just began howling like a siren.

The noise abruptly brought Ntairow to her senses. She got up onto her single pair of long, stiltlike legs with a suddenness more befitting teleportation than a simple act of standing. She held her tail high, its branches fanning out.

"What is it, Rebecca?" Teresa asked again, more slowly this time. She placed her paws upon Rebecca's shoulders and gave her an imploring stare.

"It's… just… _horrible_," Rebecca managed to gasp out. She then backed away from Teresa and cast a fearful glance into the hallway from which she'd emerged just moments before. Returning her tearful gaze to the others, she breathlessly said, "Here. It's over here," and then took off down the hallway from whence she'd come.

Teresa rushed after her as fast as her short legs would allow, accompanied by Syr, Karo, and Ntairow. Ultimately, Rebecca came to a halt, and once all of the others had arrived at their apparent destination, she wasted no time in fleeing the scene. She had _not_ wanted to come back to that place and the sight that it presented, and upon seeing it with their own eyes, no one whom she had brought there was in any doubt as to why.

There was the twisted, blackened corpse of Madeline. There was her blood, cast all over the floor and walls. And there was the door to Esaax's cell, left wide open, with a hole burned through the far wall that was more than big enough to admit an escaping kwazai.

Cries of shock, sorrow and revulsion tore through the air. Karo immediately looked away from the slain Mr. Mime. Syr turned and retched. Ntairow cried out and buried her face in one of her left hands while reaching out with both of her right hands to prop herself against the wall.

"My God… _no_…" Teresa's voice sounded very fragile. She leaned over the corpse, reaching for Madeline's remaining hand. The moment she touched her, the lifeless pokémon crumbled into black dust. Teresa broke into sobs.

Shakily, Syr turned to Ntairow. The kwazai swayed slightly where she stood, as if she were about to pass out again. She was clutching her head and her chest simultaneously, and the tension in her face told Syr that she was in very real pain.

"The _darkness_…" Ntairow said almost voicelessly. "The residue of it still hangs in the air. But _he's_ not here."

She pushed herself away from the wall and began to stride determinedly toward the exit that Esaax had made, avoiding the blood on the ground with graceful and sure steps. But then she found the end of a long, purple tail coiled around one of her arms as if to try and halt her.

"Wait!" Syr called out to her, struggling not to be dragged along as she kept on walking.

The kwazai stopped and turned her long, flat face toward him, wearing the glare to end all glares.

"…Listen," Syr said. "Esaax is my friend, too. If you're going after him, I'm going with you."

Karo approached Ntairow and Syr. The expression on his stone face was unreadable. "And if he's going, then _I'm_ going," he said. "I'll look after you, buddy, don't worry," he told Syr.

Ntairow didn't feel as though she had the luxury of time or of patience enough to argue with them. The urge to seek out the terribly troubled creature that Esaax had become and rush to his aid was hard-wired into her brain—she couldn't easily resist the demands of her highly developed powers of empathy and flat-out wouldn't resist them when it was the suffering of someone whom she loved that spurred them into action. She nodded to Syr and Karo, and Syr released his hold on her.

The arbok looked back at Teresa. Tears fell silently from his gray eyes. "Take care of Jen," he told her. Then Syr turned away, and he and Karo followed Ntairow out of the Haven in silence.


	12. Hunter of the Shadows

**Chapter 12 – Hunter of the Shadows**

As silently as he could, Esaax staggered through the forested area outside of Convergence. He'd put a considerable distance between himself and the Haven in quite a short time, having run at full speed the entire way, but now he was slowed by exhaustion and impeded further by the rain-induced softness of the ground, as well as by the maze of surrounding trees.

Though lightheaded and aching everywhere, Esaax nonetheless fought to keep his breathing calm and inaudible in spite of his lungs' demands for more air. He would not allow himself to be heard if he could help it. He didn't want to be noticed by any living thing.

He knew what he would do if anything did show up. Thoughts of it—_desires_ of it—were taking over his mind. The simple, undeniable fact was that he had never known a hunger as savagely strong as that which he now felt, and Esaax knew that the next living creature to cross his path would be fatally obliged to stop it.

Going into the forest had been a wise move on his part, he reckoned. There were pokémon here, but they were fewer in number and more scattered than the pokémon back in the city, where Esaax could effortlessly seek out his prey door-to-door…

He shook his head fiercely to once again clear it of the notion of running back to an easy feast. In his growing desperation, he silently called out, _Stay away!_ Many pokémon feared psychic-types, he knew, and so he figured that a mindvoice would likely keep most of his potential victims at a safe distance.

But, as Esaax quickly realized, his new form was no more telepathically gifted than his prior form. His silent message might have reached the mind of another psychic, but it was completely undetected by the hoothoot who appeared then from the branches above, oblivious to Esaax's desperate warning.

The bird was quite small, quite young. Possibly he was out on his very first hunt, but rather than spotting some relatively harmless and tasty prey creature, he had instead found Esaax. Puzzled and curious, the hoothoot began flapping his way closer to the kwazai.

"No, no!" Esaax urged under his breath, but it was really himself that he was trying to stop. And he was failing.

His heart raced as the hoothoot approached. The overwhelming power of his instincts flooded his brain, driving his mind beneath their currents. His senses lit up, and his muscles tensed—he was ready to strike. The hoothoot drew closer and closer—and then Esaax's arm lashed out suddenly, his huge hand snatching the hoothoot right out of the air, his desire to avoid doing any further harm having become completely unreachable in an instant.

The hoothoot struggled in the kwazai's strong grip, scattering feathers and screaming. The commotion brought another presence into Esaax's company: that of the father noctowl.

Without a second's hesitation, the noctowl attempted hypnosis, but Esaax had already raised his safeguard on the chance that the hoothoot might try the same thing. The kwazai merely stared into the pulsing, red light in the noctowl's eyes with an utterly unconcerned expression.

"Let him _go_!" the noctowl cried, then surged forward in a take down attack, not caring about the pain that he knew that the attack's recoil would deal unto him in the process. His strike ended up hurting him much more than he'd expected, however; an orange counter aura flared up around the kwazai a split-second before the take down could connect, and the noctowl was thrown violently backward with a scream of both pain and surprise.

With the noctowl now writhing on the ground, seemingly incapacitated for the moment, Esaax decided that he could finally eat in peace. His fingers closed around the hoothoot within his grip with all their strength. One last, piercing squawk escaped the beak of the hoothoot, and then warm, thick streams of blood flowed freely downward over Esaax's wrist and forearm as he squeezed the life out of his prey. The kwazai then opened his mouth as wide as it would go. He shoved the bloody remnant of his victim into the back of his throat and swallowed it whole.

Esaax relocated his jaws and sighed happily. Then he caught sight of the furious father noctowl, who shrieked wordlessly in grief and rage as he managed to get back onto his feet and then leapt into flight. The noctowl's wings shimmered and transformed into gleaming, metallic blades as he wheeled around in midair, ready to strike with steel wing.

Esaax was more than ready for him. His predatory eyes, which focused sharply on anything that lived and breathed, kept an unbreakable gaze upon the noctowl. His multisensory tail, meanwhile, guided his target acquisition with deadly precision. Just as the now razor-sharp edge of one of the noctowl's wings was about to slice into his neck, Esaax blasted the noctowl with a reflux attack. The noctowl was sent crashing into a tree several yards away, knocked out cold.

Though Esaax had not given the slightest concern to the drawback of his dark-type attack prior to using it, he now found himself vaguely surprised that he felt so little painful recoil upon using reflux this time, particularly considering that he'd blasted the noctowl almost head-on and at very close range. While the price that he'd just paid for using it was nothing to scoff at, it was nowhere near as terrible as what the reflux that had killed Madeline had earned him.

The shock to his body from blasting the noctowl unconscious was gone fairly quickly, whereas the shock to his mind that he'd experienced the last time that he'd used reflux was absent altogether this time. As for his hunger, the young hoothoot whom he had just devoured was too small to satisfy it. Quite eagerly, Esaax made his way forward to feed upon the noctowl, as well.

- o -

Ntairow had followed Esaax's trail into the forest, with the arbok and nosepass close behind. The terrain had become more difficult upon entering the woods; there were patches of mud everywhere, some of them being somewhat deep, in which the three pokémon had to try and avoid getting stuck. Within a matter of minutes, however, Karo failed in that endeavor.

"Move, you guys. I'm gonna try and blast my way out," Karo announced. He began charging up his nose with an ominous hum.

"I get the feeling that you should save your electricity, Karo," Syr advised.

"Not to mention that you should consider the noise that might make," Ntairow added.

Ntairow and Syr then got as good a hold on the nosepass as was possible. Fortunately, they were both quite strong, so once they had a good grip on him, the going was easy enough.

"You can still stay behind," Ntairow pointed out to Karo as she worked to free him. The nosepass only scowled at her as he was pulled out from the mud.

"He doesn't need to stay behind. He just needs to watch his step," Syr countered. "Are you all right now?" he asked of Karo.

Karo just grunted inconclusively in reply. "Stupid mud," he griped to himself. "I _hate_ that stuff…"

"Well, on the bright side, it did cover up the rest of that smeargle graffiti," Syr said.

The three then got moving once again, picking their way through the trees and minding the scattered puddles of mud all the more carefully.

"Are we still on the right track?" Syr asked.

"We are," Ntairow said, "but…"

"'But'…?" Syr prompted her.

Ntairow sighed. "His spirit has closed itself off to me. I no longer share any of his sensations… it's like the greater part of his being has died…" The thought of what this could mean brought tears to her eyes that immediately began flowing down her face in steady streams. "I can still sense his physical presence—his body, that's _all_—meaning I know where he is but not what he's experiencing or doing—though I do have some idea," she said darkly. "Very recent death hovers nearby…"

For quite a while in the wake of those words, the three continued after Esaax in total silence. As the quiet persisted, something crossed Syr's mind and ultimately compelled him to ask about it.

"So…" he spoke up. "Ntairow, was it?"

The kwazai merely made a vaguely affirmative noise at this.

"There's something I've been wondering…" Syr said.

"And that is…? Ntairow prompted.

"Well… you've known Esaax for a long time, right?"

"If you consider roughly a fifth of a century a long time, then yes," Ntairow answered.

"I do," Syr said, though what really struck him about the length of time that she'd just described was that it meant that she actually hadn't known Esaax for much longer than he had, which surprised him a bit. While Syr and Esaax had encountered others of the latter's kind during their previous time together, they'd never really gotten the chance to get to know any of them under the circumstances; as such, Syr had assumed that Ntairow had come from wherever Esaax had, that the two kwazai had grown up together.

Since that was apparently not the case, he reckoned that Ntairow wouldn't have gotten as many chances to have perhaps witnessed what it was that he wanted to ask her about, but he figured that it was worth a shot anyway.

"Anyway…" the arbok went on, "well, when you knew him… did you ever see any signs of it? Of his illness, I mean?"

Ntairow sent an odd look back at him. "What he's going through right now was caused by his evolution. He only just evolved tonight."

"No, not that… I'm talking about something else," Syr said. "Something I saw earlier today. We… we lost an old friend today." His voice cracked on those words, and he had to struggle a bit to continue. "Before we went to see her… and during… I saw this strange, multicolored aura try to form around him a couple of times."

Ntairow didn't stop walking, but she did tense up noticeably. "You're certain it had many colors?" she asked, sounding somewhat awed and alarmed at the same time.

"Yes," Syr confirmed. "And… I think it has something to do with grief. When I went to meet him at the Haven, they told me why he was in there. They said it was some kind of psychic illness, and they described something that happened… right after we lost one of our other friends." Thinking about _her_ brought out the tears that had been welling up in Syr's eyes ever since he had spoken of what had happened to Faurur; he shook them away as best as he could, which wasn't terribly well at all.

"They said that he'd apparently seen a multicolored aura appear around himself then," he continued, "and then he couldn't tell whether he was alive or dead or what. It _broke_ him, Ntairow. It took the people at the Haven years before they got him back to anywhere near normal… but it looks as though he needed more time."

"Dear Night…" Ntairow said, half-whispering. "We were right about him all along…"

"What?" Syr asked. "Did you see that aura, too?"

"No," Ntairow responded, "but I did see something just as important, something in his psychic signature that apparently none of his people recognized—or believed us about. Even Esaax himself couldn't quite believe what we told him about what we saw. Some of us took their word for it—just assumed that there genuinely weren't any among the Evergray and that we must have been mistaken in our perception of him somehow—but others weren't so quick to dismiss it, including me…"

"Ntairow… what are you talking about?" Syr asked, trying not to sound as confused as he felt or as frustrated as he was beginning to feel. "They assumed that there genuinely weren't any _what_ among the Evergray?"

"Healers," Ntairow clarified. "Esaax is a healer. Most of our kind can only share our pain. Those like Esaax can share their lifeforce, as well. They use this ability to help others, to strengthen and heal them."

"Wow…" Syr said, astonished at the notion that his friend could have been harboring such a secret all this time and vaguely wondering why he had been keeping it a secret. "That's amazing if it's true… but I don't know. It didn't sound or look like he was really helping anyone—just hurting himself."

"That's part of how it's supposed to work," Ntairow told him. "Like I said, it involves sharing one's lifeforce—giving of one's self. But it's not supposed to hurt the healer in the ways you described.

"And if it really wasn't helping anyone… well, I'm not surprised. It sounds as though no one among his kind or anyone else he's lived with over the years has known for sure that he was what he was any more than he's known it. And his healer abilities have been compelling him to use them—and since he had no proper guidance, no way of really knowing what he was doing… of course he's made mistakes. Of course things went wrong." She sighed. "Dear Night, do I ever wish I had reunited with him sooner…"

"Yeah… I wish I had, too," Syr said, finding himself at a loss for anything else to say. "Not that I could have really helped him, but…"

Ntairow lowered her head slightly in acknowledgment of his words, but said nothing else for a moment. Then, "So how long have _you_ known him, then?" she asked Syr.

"Not quite as long as you have," Syr answered. "Only since just a few years before the Extinction. We… hadn't been in touch for a while before today," he found himself admitting. "Me and… and another of our friends had to take care of something important—someone was threatening some of her kind and mine—and, well… He couldn't come with us, and we couldn't go with him."

"Hmm," was apparently all that Ntairow had to say to that.

Syr didn't attempt to get anything more out of her for the time being, not on that subject or any other. He had a lot on his mind now, even more than before… and among those thoughts was something that had made its way back toward the forefront of his mind as someone who had so recently departed his life once and for all had been brought up more than once in the conversation that he'd just had.

He felt fresh pangs of grief as his mind lingered on the subject of Faurur, and he tried but failed to hold back a fresh surge of tears as well as the sobs that accompanied them. Ntairow cast a concerned, sympathetic-looking glance over her shoulder at this but said nothing.

Karo, however, hastily waddled up to the arbok, fighting to stay alongside him. "You all right there, big guy?" he asked. "…Is this about that friend you said you lost earlier?"

Syr found that he could only nod in response.

"Well—" Karo broke off into a swear as he nearly tripped on a branch. "…Whoops, sorry about that. Anyway… uh… crap. I kinda suck at this… I wish you'd been able to tell me about this sooner, like back at the house, maybe. I could've had Breanna bring us over some pie or something, and we could have talked about all this… Maybe she'd have had a better idea on what to say than I do."

"It's okay. I appreciate what you're doing just fine," Syr said, and he meant it. Still, he did have to agree with Karo's wish that they'd had more of a chance to discuss what had happened with Faurur earlier—especially since the nosepass might have been in a position to help him carry out some of Faurur's last wishes. Syr knew very little about what she had asked him to start warning people about, but Karo, with the wealth of information that he had lying around at his home, might have been a little more knowledgeable about the things in question.

Even without ready access to those stores of information, Karo still might know something useful offhand, Syr considered. Deciding to find out if indeed Karo did, "Hey, Karo… have you ever heard of deranics?" he asked the nosepass. "And something to do with them called—oh, what was it? …Oh yes. '_Seterhath Zulo-Denvenda_'. Are you familiar with these things at all?"

"Hmm… I'm not, but Ren might be. When he gets back, I'll ask him," Karo said.

Syr sighed. "I really wish you'd stop talking about your trainer like that."

"Like what?" Karo asked.

"Like… well, like he's still alive," Syr answered quietly.

"And why wouldn't he be?" Karo asked.

"Well… because he's human, Karo," Syr said.

Karo snorted. "Whatever you say…"

Syr looked at him pityingly for a moment, as he usually did whenever Karo insisted on entertaining the notion that Ren was still alive, but the weight of his own recent loss on his figurative shoulders led him to let the subject drop early this time. _Let him believe, if that's the only way he can deal with it,_ he told himself, with some small part of him wishing that he had been given the luxury of doing likewise.

- o -

Ceaselessly moving as if possessed, Esaax found the trees around him thinning. His wandering had brought him back toward the city, which was now perfectly fine by him. He was no longer hungry in the slightest anyway. He had found the abandoned, partial carcass of a stantler minutes ago, and there had been just enough left to chase away the last remaining traces of his hunger.

He had eaten too much, actually. He felt slightly ill and sought to sleep it off as soon as he could find a decent place to do so. Before long, he came upon the structure of an unfinished mini mall. He figured that he could go into one of the empty stores and thereby at least avoid direct exposure to the sun, which was due to rise in just a matter of hours.

Esaax entered one of the stores through a large, smashed window. To his surprise, he was instantly greeted by a trio of voices:

"Hey, what's that?"

"Huh, I can't tell what he is…"

"Who cares what he is? He doesn't belong here!"

The owners of the three voices came forward to reveal themselves as three smeargle—needlessly in this case, as Esaax had already seen them through the darkness. The one whom Esaax had heard last spoke again, introducing himself and his companions.

"Why, hello there! I'm Mark," he said. "This is Tom—" He pointed at the smeargle to his right. "—and this is Travis." He pointed at the one to his left. "And _this_," Mark said, spreading his arms wide to indicate the space surrounding him, "is _our_ territory. Thanks for the visit. Now _get out_!"

Mentioning that this place was their territory was also unnecessary for any of the smeargle to have done, as Esaax had already seen that, too. It was literally written all over the walls. It looked to him as though they were trying to convince themselves more than anyone else that this place belonged to them.

Esaax took a step toward the smeargle. The smeargle all took a step back. "Maybe I'd just rather tell _you_ to get out," the kwazai said.

"Hmm. Looks like blue-butt won't listen to reason. What a shame," Mark said, shaking his head. "Okay, then, if that's how you wanna play…" He took a great leap backward and called out, "_Go_!"

Tom attacked first, using spark. Electricity crackled all about his body as he tackled the kwazai's shoulder and held on tightly to allow his electric charge to keep on flowing into his opponent.

Esaax snarled at the sizzling pain and retaliated with counter. The attack shocked Tom out of his electric technique, but the smeargle still refused to let go of him. Esaax solved that problem by grabbing the smeargle with his jaws and pulling him off, shaking him briefly before throwing him forcefully to the ground.

Esaax was sure that Tom was out of the fight, but then the smeargle began to emit the telltale glow of the recover technique. Tom's wounds began mending swiftly. Esaax moved to try and foil Tom's recovery—but then Travis seemed to launch out of nowhere with a blazing dynamicpunch—

—and missed. His attack had been ruined by Esaax's watchful tail, which had allowed the kwazai to sense its unsubtle approach and sidestep it almost lazily.

Snarling and muttering curses under his breath, Travis spun on his heel to face Esaax once more. He raised his fist, and it burst into rust-colored "flames" of fighting-type energy as he readied another dynamicpunch. But he never got a chance to launch his second strike, for at that moment, Esaax fired a reflux attack at him. The force of the dark-type blast sent Travis flying into a junk-filled corner, where he was impaled upon a shard of jagged sheet metal. The smeargle's eyes froze wide open as his body slid slowly down upon the daggerlike protrusion.

Esaax staggered at the jolt of his attack's recoil. It compromised him for a moment that was just long enough to allow Mark to blast him right in the head—with the reflux that he had just sketched from the kwazai himself.

The strike itself was only somewhat painful… but the moment after the last traces of its dark energy seeped into him, a strange, harsh noise swelled to a painful intensity inside Esaax's skull. He gave a ragged, tormented-sounding cry and swayed on the spot as a dizzying wave washed over him, and then he dropped like a stone.

Just before he blacked out, he heard Tom say, "No, don't zap him again; let's just get out of here!"


	13. X

**Chapter 13 – X**

Esaax wasn't unconscious for long. He awoke to find himself feeling quite unwell, nauseated and fatigued. Pain pounded in his head and seared down the length of his spine to the end of his tail.

He tried to stand, but found that he couldn't do so. Instead, he fell into a four-legged version of a kneeling position. He looked about, sweeping the space surrounding him with a gaze that wouldn't quite focus. Grumbling, he buried his face in his hands and tried to rub the haze out of his eyes.

When he looked up again, he spotted movement off in the corner. He turned his head toward the motion. There he saw Travis the smeargle crawl out of the junk pile, brush himself off, and begin walking up to him. The smeargle was covered in black scorch marks, with the metal shard still pierced right through him.

"Feeling all right?" Travis asked amiably.

Esaax stared blankly at Travis for a second. He then tried to get back onto his feet once again, succeeding this time, and started backing away from Travis in as much of a hurry as he could manage. His legs gave out from underneath him before he got very far, however, forcing him to once again kneel before the undead smeargle.

"What are you running from, huh? Can't we have a little chat?" Travis asked.

"I'm not talking to you," Esaax said flatly.

"Yes, you are, you just opened your mouth and said—"

"You're a _hallucination_!"

"I'm a damned good hallucination, though, you have to admit," Travis said, fidgeting with the bloody piece of metal that protruded from his chest.

Esaax shut his eyes and shook his head. To his dismay, Travis was still there when he opened his eyes once more. Esaax groaned. "I feel like crap," he mumbled.

"Well, of course you do! I mean, think about it. You keep using that crazy black beam of yours, and you hurt yourself every time you use it, no matter how much you hold back when you do. And it's cumulative, you know. That damage adds up over time.

"But that's just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it?" Travis went on. "See, every time that nifty little attack bounces back at you, that's pure dark energy hitting your system. Psybane. Which really shouldn't bother you _that_ much, right? After all, you're half-psychic, but you're half-dark, too, aren't you?"

Esaax sighed. "Yeah, that's right."

"Well, now, wait a minute. Suppose that's… not _exactly_ right."

"…What do you mean?" Esaax asked, perplexed.

"Botched evolution, my friend," Travis answered. "Or are you gonna try and tell me that there wasn't something distinctly… _off_ about your evolutionary experience?"

Esaax only growled in response.

"The problem with you evolving is that _you_ weren't supposed to," Travis said. "Wasn't supposed to be possible, was it? My friend, you got _forced_ into this form. You got _forced_ into this combination of elements, and it's not one that's meant to be fooled around with."

The smeargle began to pace in front of Esaax. "Dark and psychic. That's a completely one-sided matchup right there. One is devastatingly dominant; the other, totally helpless. Now, maybe somewhere out there in the wide world of nature and supernature, that works just fine. But not here. Not in _you_.

"You just can't go forcing these things, man. Yet someone—I repeat, _someone_—forced it on you. Now, I want you to take a moment right now to think back. Can you figure out _who_ might have done this to you?"

After a moment's hesitation, Esaax did as he was advised, but his present illness made it hard for him to focus well enough to recall his memories clearly. As he managed to remember some of the most recent things that he'd done, he found himself sickened further, swallowing hard as his stomach gave a threatening lurch.

It wasn't until he managed to reach back to his memory of the period of time immediately preceding his evolution that anything even remotely resembling an answer to Travis's question came to him. "I… I don't know who it was for sure, but… I remember something hitting me right before I evolved. And I thought I felt someone in the room with me… I think it was a ghost."

Travis cocked an eyebrow at him. "You _thought_ you felt a ghost in the room with you, huh?" he said in a skeptical tone. "May I remind you that you… weren't exactly feeling so great at the time? In case you haven't noticed, sometimes the mind plays tricks on you when you're feeling under the weather."

Esaax just glared dully at him.

"But anyway," Travis went on, "try looking a little further back than that. Is there anything else you've experienced recently that had any kind of significant physical effect on you?"

Esaax combed through his memories again, trying to keep his thoughts moving in a straight line backward from his evolution without overlooking any potentially important details. He remembered being brought to the Haven, then remembered the ride in Jen's car from Syr's house, and then remembered the ride to Syr's house from…

Esaax's eyes widened, and he felt his mouth go dry. In his mind, he held a picture of the private counseling office at the Hope Institute, wherein a needle sank into his arm under the guidance of a human hand…

"_DeLeo_," Esaax said hoarsely.

"Bingo."

"It was that serum he gave me… _that's_ what started all this…"

"You've got it," Travis said, beaming proudly. "You're miserable now because of that sorry excuse for a human. He just _tacked_ another type on you, and that screwed up the one you already had. Your new body was elementally unstable from the start, and it's growing ever more so, I'm afraid…"

Travis came to stand right in front of Esaax. He stood on his toes, brought his paintbrush-tail forward, and painted a large "X" across the kwazai's chest in bright red ink. "You're a goner, Evergray."

"What if I just don't use that dark attack anymore?"

Travis shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid it's too late now, my friend. Too much damage and too much stress in a period of time that's much too short for your poor body to cope with… and there's no fixing it, man. You're on the way out, and there's no turning back…"

Esaax spent a few moments in silence. "So this is really gonna kill me," he said finally, wearily.

Travis nodded, uttering a small, affirmative noise. "And it's all thanks to Mr. Sylvester DeLeo."

Esaax sighed and knitted his spidery fingers on top of his head, covering his face with his large palms. "Maybe I _should_ go," he whispered. "I _hate_ what I've become. Do you realize how many people I've killed _just tonight_?"

"You're a predator now, so what? You've gotta eat, right?"

"I killed _you_ on a full stomach," Esaax pointed out.

"_Accidentally_. And no, you didn't kill _me_, anyway; _I'm_ just a hallucination, remember?"

Esaax groaned miserably and lowered his gaze to the dirty floor. "This is all just so _wrong_…"

"I agree," said Travis, lowering his head somberly. "I wish that there was some way to change your fate… but there just _isn't_ one, man. Sorry. Oh… but there is _something_ you can still do about it…"

"What's that?" Esaax asked, lifting his gaze.

"DeLeo put this misery on you. Why don't you go pay him back?"

"What?"

"Come on. You know you wanna."

"I don't know," Esaax muttered. "I'm just so _tired_…"

"There, you see? Your time is running out. So go on, get going. It's not too far from here."

"I don't know if I can walk there right now, even if it is close. I'm sure I can't run," Esaax told the smeargle. "And besides, I… I just don't think I have it in me… I mean, going over there, and then hurting him… _killing_ him…"

"But you _do_ have it in you, my friend," Travis said with more than a hint of enthusiasm. "You _can_ do this. You _can_ pull this off. There's just one thing you have to do."

"And what's that?"

The smeargle gave a bloody grin. "Surrender, Evergray. Let me take over." His green eyes shifted dramatically in color, becoming black all throughout like a pair of deep, dark holes. The rest of him followed suit, the scattered scorchings of his coat spreading until he was pitch-black all over. He became an animate shadow, a dark mass that rapidly changed shape and grew into a dramatically different form.

Esaax now beheld the great, dark form of another kwazai, one who was made out of softly glowing shadow-substance. He stared at them, and he quickly found himself moved by the sight and presence of them. He found them beautiful, incredibly so, and he wondered why he had not allowed himself to look at this presence and that which they represented in this way before.

The shadow-kwazai lifted Esaax's head in their hands, comforting him as if he were their child. They took him by the shoulders and lifted him back onto his feet, supporting his weight easily. They gazed deep into his eyes as they held him steady. "_May I?_" they asked in a hollow-sounding voice.

Esaax's surrender was silent. He opened his arms to embrace the darkness, which melted into him like ice and left him feeling virtually nothing: no remorse for his recent actions or trepidation about what he was about to do, no pain or illness, not even the tiredness that he had known mere minutes before. All that was left was the cold simplicity of his new resolve: _Go. Find him._

Esaax rose, exited the empty store, and strode over to the curb, stepping over it onto the street. Headlights appeared from around the corner a short distance away, and the moment they did, he collapsed onto the asphalt.

The approaching car came to a stop just short of where Esaax had fallen, and the golduck who'd been driving it got out and rushed to his side at once, leaving the vehicle running.

"Are you all right?" the golduck asked concernedly—then gave a squawk of surprise as a massive hand lying at his feet suddenly seized him by the ankles and pulled him to the ground. Esaax's other hand came down hard in a fist against the golduck's head immediately afterward, then did so again for good measure, knocking the golduck out.

Esaax got back to his feet once again, then went over to the car. He determined that he could probably fit into it and operate it just fine if it weren't for that roof. With a fair bit of effort, he managed to tear away enough of it to suit his needs. He then smashed the window in his way and stepped over the door to get in, not noticing the broken shards of glass that bit into him as he did so. Somewhat awkwardly, he turned himself to face forward and extended his hind legs up and over into the seat behind him.

Had he been in his right mind, Esaax might have felt a thrill at the fact that he was going to drive for the first time in over a decade, with no Syr or anyone else around in any position to tell him that he couldn't do so. As it was, though, he was still focused wholly upon the task that awaited him. Without a second's hesitation, he sped off toward the Hope Institute, very nearly running over the golduck from whom he'd stolen the car.

- o -

Just as the three pokémon who were seeking Esaax exited the forest, Ntairow stopped abruptly in front of Syr and Karo. Syr very nearly ran right into her, reeling back and veering off to the side just in time.

"Ntairow, what is it?" he asked her.

"I've lost him completely now," Ntairow said heavily. She turned to the others. "I can't sense _anything_ of him now. It's as if he's simply _gone_."

"You don't think that he's… that he's no longer alive, do you?" Syr asked fearfully in barely more than a whisper.

Ntairow lowered her head. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I honestly don't know."

Out of nowhere, two shapes burst onto the scene then: the two surviving smeargle. They stopped dead at the sight of Ntairow.

"Run for it, it's another one!" said Tom.

"No, it's not…" said Mark.

"Yes, it is," said Ntairow. She swiftly grabbed both smeargle by their tails and raised them to eye level. "You two have seen Esaax, then?"

"If by 'Esaax', you mean that big, blue _psycho_ who killed our friend, then yes!" Mark said, flailing in a futile attempt to escape.

Syr and Ntairow both winced at the news of yet another murder having been committed by their friend. Karo, meanwhile, came to stand before Ntairow and looked up at her two captives.

"Give them to me," the nosepass said. There was an ominous weight to his voice that hadn't been present before, and he seemed to be bearing down on the smeargle even from below.

It was then that the smeargle finally noticed Karo. Their nervousness increased, and they began to struggle even more desperately to get away.

"Karo, you have no way of knowing if these are the same smeargle who broke into your house," said Syr.

"Are you sure about that? Cause I've gotta say, they're looking pretty guilty from here." He edged even closer to the smeargle, and their reactions to this made it clear that they badly wanted to be somewhere else at this point. "See how they fear me," Karo said with a laugh. "They know what they've done. And they know what's coming. Now, let's see…" he said, examining the ink that was beginning to leak from their tail-tips under the pressure of Ntairow's grip. "There's Mr. Blue… there's Mr. Yellow… hey, where's Mr. Red?"

"I already said, _schnozzo_, that 'Esaax' thing killed him! He tried to kill all of us!" Mark said angrily.

"And _he_ was the one trespassing in _our_ territory!" Tom added.

"Yeah, but then I blasted him with one of these—" Mark raised his hand and shot a reflux into the sky, at which Ntairow nearly dropped him. "—and down he went."

"…You didn't _kill_ him, did you?" Ntairow asked shakily.

"No, Tom wouldn't _let_ me finish him off," Mark said acidly.

"Cause when you shot him, it hurt you, too! You might have _died_ if you'd killed him!" Tom responded.

"You can't possibly know that any more than I can!" Mark argued. "Well, okay, then. When that blue freak wakes up and decides to come after us, I'll just tell him he can go ahead and blast your brains out first since it'll have been _your_ bright idea to show mercy to the psycho that'll have made that lovely scenario possible in the first place, you dumbass!"

"Stop it, both of you," Ntairow said firmly. She knocked the smeargles' heads together. Karo cheered. "Is he still where you left him, then?" Ntairow demanded of the smeargle.

"Urgh… I don't know," Mark replied after he stopped seeing lights bursting in the back of his eyes. "If he's stayed unconscious, then yes, he's probably still there."

"Actually… he's not," said Tom. Everyone, including Mark, turned to stare at him. "Over there," Tom said, pointing.

Everyone looked in the direction that Tom was indicating. There they saw a kwazai in a mangled blue car hurtling down the street at an incredible speed.

Ntairow threw the two smeargle facefirst to the ground. "Come on!" she shouted, taking off at a run in the general direction in which the car was heading. "And leave _them_ alone!" she added over her shoulder to Karo.

"Awww…" the nosepass groaned in disappointment. He turned to the two smeargle, who were still sprawled out on the ground and rubbing their sore muzzles. Now he really _was_ bearing down on them. "Make no mistake—I am _so_ gonna squash you one of these days," he told them, using the "ominous" voice once again. Then he shot off a tiny bolt of electricity to send the smeargle scurrying off on their way.


	14. Chasing a Rumor

**Chapter 14 – Chasing a Rumor**

Esaax rushed recklessly through the streets of Convergence, which were fortunately more or less deserted at the time. Most of the local pokémon were diurnal, and with sunrise approaching, most of those who didn't keep daytime hours were likely getting ready to go to sleep.

The kwazai found what he was looking for fairly quickly, recognizing the squat box of a building that was the Hope Institute right away. He entered the parking lot and parked the car at an odd angle across two spaces, then jumped out of the vehicle, landing less than gracefully and struggling for a couple of moments to keep from toppling over.

Esaax didn't bother making his way around to the front door. He could sense living presences just a couple of yards past the wall that lay before him, two of whom were familiar—one of whom was his target.

He fired a sustained reflux into the barrier in front of him. As soon as enough of the wall had been weakened to admit him, he stepped forward right into it, causing the weakened portion to crumble into powder around him as he passed through it.

It turned out that there was another wall between him and his quarry, but this fact didn't faze him; he simply decided to repeat the process that had gotten him into the building in the first place. His body seemed somewhat less willing to oblige this time. There was a slightly longer delay than usual before the black beam came to his summons, and when the dark energy began pouring from his outstretched hand, his senses faltered a bit, his vision briefly dimming, the raised voices from the other side of the wall temporarily drowned out by a ringing in his ears.

Just as he'd done the time before, Esaax pushed his way through the wall and into the room beyond it as soon as he could. He was met with the sight of a small crowd of glalie bearing dark blue protect auras, and he could sense DeLeo's presence behind them as the human used them for cover—but before he could try to leap over the glalie and get at his quarry, there was a loud _crack_, and he was down in an instant.

DeLeo stood and made his way over to the now unconscious kwazai, then looked down at him and sighed. "You could have just knocked, Esaax."

- o -

When Esaax awoke, he was greeted by the sight of a long, spindly, robotic arm that extended from somewhere above him to a point right in front of his face. It clutched a now-darkened revive crystal in its metal fingers. Esaax considered biting the arm and tearing it down as he watched it ascend rather swiftly away from him, but lingering grogginess kept him from acting on that idea before the arm had vanished into its source.

It was then that his senses reawakened enough to detect the two familiar presences from earlier very nearby: those of DeLeo and Solonn—the former of which got a very strong reaction from him. His eyes and oculons both locked on to the human before him, and his exhaustion seemed to shatter into pieces; he promptly rose and began snapping and swiping at the wall of glowing, green energy that separated him from DeLeo.

In the next moment, however, he found himself suddenly no longer interested in trying to break out, lowering his arms and sinking to his knees. A calming gas had been released into the field with him from above while he had been so distracted by the sight of his target so close to him.

"Shh… it's all right, Esaax," DeLeo said. "You're exactly where you need to be right now. I'll bet you've got a lot of questions about what's happened to you, and I've got all the answers."

DeLeo looked at him expectantly, but Esaax only stared back. The kwazai still entertained thoughts of attacking and killing DeLeo as he looked upon him, but no longer felt any need to act upon those thoughts.

DeLeo approached the containment field then. He came to a stop right in front of it and leaned against the glowing wall as if it were ordinary glass. Doing so apparently didn't hurt him in any way, just as it had not hurt Esaax.

"You probably didn't know you could evolve, did you?" DeLeo asked. "I know most wobbuffet don't. So I'm gonna tell you a little story, Esaax. One that'll explain why this has been kept from you—and why you shouldn't be scared of it. No, you should be anything _but_ scared…" he told Esaax with a note of what sounded like awed excitement in his voice.

DeLeo took a step back then, clasping his hands in front of himself. "There's a legend," he began, "hundreds of years old, about a king of the Mordial region named Asotura. His reign was glorious but short—he was killed by an assassin who was never found.

"The king's body was discovered by his most faithful pokémon friend. And that friend was a kwazai, Esaax. Just like you are.

"Anyway, according to the legend, this kwazai refused to let the king be taken from him, and so he called on his 'ultimate inner power'—and actually _raised Asotura from the dead_.

"Now, that was the good news for the king. The bad news was that his people decided they didn't want his reign to continue. They didn't exactly like the tale of Asotura's resurrection, you see. They called it unnatural, and they called him an abomination.

"And the kwazai became demons in their eyes. The ancient Mordialans decided to just slaughter every single kwazai they could find. And they did the same thing to wobbuffet and wynaut, too, in order to make sure the kwazai were exterminated completely. Asotura's own army even sided with the public. They went against the king's orders to put an end to the killing and instead joined in the effort to eradicate your species. Doesn't it just make you _sick_?"

Esaax neither said nor did a single thing in response. His two eyes and four oculons continued to hold the human in a dead, silent stare.

"Well, anyway…" DeLeo resumed, "as for Asotura himself, there wasn't anyone around who didn't want him dead—and permanently this time. But when they stormed the castle, he wasn't anywhere to be found. Nobody knows how he got away, but he did, and he also managed to rescue a handful of your kind along with himself.

"After he escaped from Mordial, he looked for a place where your people could continue to be protected for generations to come. Apparently one was provided right here in Hoenn by a legendary pokémon—nobody knows which one. Whoever they were, they gave their home to the refugees. Then they used their legendary powers to hide the refugees' new sanctuary before taking off for who knows where. You might've heard of this sanctuary, Esaax. These days, it's known as Mirage Island.

"Anyway, the people of Asotura's former kingdom tried to keep his story and the secret of your people's final evolutionary form from surviving the ages. But their efforts ultimately proved useless, because that story was recorded—supposedly by Asotura himself—on a little something called the Tablet of Asotura. The tablet went missing for centuries, but it was eventually found by a human explorer from Pacifidlog. But before he could go public with his discovery, well… you know what happened fourteen years ago," he said quietly.

"Luckily, though, one of the explorer's pokémon bothered to take care of the tablet after the explorer passed away. That pokémon eventually decided he wanted to see kwazai brought back into the world, and ultimately he found us and sought our assistance in that matter. Once he told me the story of Asotura and what his kwazai could do… well, there was no question about it. None. I knew I had to help him."

DeLeo stepped back up to the containment field. "Do you remember what I told you earlier, Esaax?" he asked. "About why I founded the Hope Institute? This—" He gestured toward Esaax. "—ties into that. We turned you into this for a very special purpose, Esaax. A very, _very_ important one."

An expression that managed to look sort of hopeful and pained at the same time overtook his features. "I know what you've lost, Esaax. I know _exactly_ what you've lost," he said, and his voice cracked audibly on those last six words. "I've lost the exact same thing—the exact same people. But we're gonna bring 'em _back_, Esaax. _You're_ gonna bring 'em back, as soon as we're sure you're strong enough."

DeLeo pressed his hands against the wall of energy between him and Esaax once more. "You'll see," he half-whispered, sounding slightly crazed, his smile broadening. "It's gonna be just like the old days. Only _better_."

He then turned away from Esaax and made for the room's exit, striding past Solonn as he went. Solonn had kept silent the entire time that DeLeo had been speaking to Esaax, and DeLeo had actually managed to forget that the glalie was there until he walked past him.

As he spoke the voice command that opened the doors before him and then ushered Solonn out of the room ahead of him, part of him noticed that the glalie was wearing an expression that was severe-looking even for those of his kind, his large, luminous, blue eyes burning rather brighter than usual. DeLeo gave these details next to none of his mind, however, too absorbed in thoughts of how close he was to finally accomplishing the goal toward which he'd been striving for more than a decade, a goal that meant more to him than anything in the world.

A few seconds later, however, a low voice from behind him cut into those thoughts.

"How could you do such a thing?" Solonn demanded, sounding both angry and hurt.

DeLeo stopped in his tracks and turned to face the glalie. "…What? What're you talking about?"

"You did this to him," Solonn hissed, shaking slightly as he spoke, "without his consent? Without even so much as his _awareness_ that he could be changed in such a way?"

DeLeo blinked at him, bemused. "What… what's it to you?"

Solonn's eyes narrowed. "You have no right to inflict a change on someone who doesn't ask you for it first," he said, moving even closer to DeLeo, causing the human to take a step back involuntarily. "_No one_ has that right. You _disgust_ me, DeLeo."

Fear began showing through DeLeo's expression insofar as it could. "Look… I'm sorry you don't like how we've gone about this whole kwazai business, okay? I really am. But… don't you understand what we're trying to do here?" he asked, pained frustration managing to come through in his tone. "Were you even paying attention to anything I said in there other than the parts you didn't like? We're trying to _restore lives_, Solonn! And let me tell you something: once we've restored certain lives in particular, I promise you Esaax is gonna be so happy that he's not gonna care that he didn't have a say in whether or not he evolved."

"And what if this legend you spoke of is just that—just a legend?" Solonn asked. "What if it turns out that you've only been chasing a damned rumor all this time? Did you consider that possibility for even a _second_? Did you consider what it might do to Esaax if he were told that he can bring back people whom he cares about when in reality he _can't_, to find out that he was subjected to a change—one that has obviously upset him very much—for _nothing_?"

DeLeo only stared at him at first. Then his face twisted in what was as much of a look of anguish as it was capable of producing. "…It's more than just a legend," he insisted. "I'm sorry you can't see that… and I'm not gonna let you get in the way of our proving it!"

With an inhuman speed, DeLeo's hands swung out toward Solonn and split down the middle with a faint _click_, each of them simultaneously opening up like the covers of a book and exposing dark, metallic nozzles. In very nearly the same instant, jets of fire came roaring out from the newly-revealed weapons—only to dissipate harmlessly against the dark blue aura that their intended target had conjured around himself just in time.

Solonn hissed and recoiled in reaction to the fiery attack despite its futility. His eyes then blazed a bright white, and a _crack_ echoed through the hallway as he unleashed a sheer cold attack on DeLeo.

The strike hit its mark—DeLeo immediately fell unconscious and dropped to the floor. Solonn briefly looked down upon him in lingering disbelief, still shaking in primal fear for a few moments, then called out to his co-workers in the Hope Institute, not comfortable with the notion of leaving DeLeo unguarded despite the human's present condition.

He couldn't undo what DeLeo had done to Esaax. But he was determined to at least see to it that the human paid for it.


	15. The Swarm

**Chapter 15 – The Swarm**

There came a point in her pursuit of Esaax when Ntairow's patience for Karo's speed—or rather for his lack thereof—finally ran out. Without warning, she broke away from the party at a very fast run, ignoring the other two pokemon's shouting pleas to let them catch up.

Syr might have at least been able to keep not too far behind Ntairow, but he would not abandon Karo. Likewise, Syr would not abandon the search for Esaax, but having completely lost sight of him and now separated from Ntairow and her empathic connection by which they'd been tracking Esaax, Syr could really only hope to still be moving in the right direction.

It was by pure chance that he and Karo eventually managed to reunite with Ntairow, several minutes after she'd left them. She was standing with her back against the front doors of none other than the Hope Institute.

"Of course…" Syr rushed to Ntairow's side. "He's here?" he asked her.

"Yes," she answered.

"_This_ is where it started," Syr said, his eyes wide with realization. "Esaax got sick _right after_ he left from here…" The arbok shook his head in disbelief and shame. "I should have figured it out much sooner, but I'd already made scapegoats out of the poor staff at the Haven… Looks like Esaax knew, though. And now he's come back for answers."

"Or blood," Ntairow said grimly.

Syr immediately found himself having to struggle to drive out an image presented by his brain of a massacre at Esaax's hands. "…So how long have you been just waiting out here?" he asked Ntairow.

"Too long. All the doors are locked, and I couldn't force any of them open. Esaax opted to take a shortcut through one of the walls, but the hole's been covered over with ice. And not normal ice, either. I was able to chip away at it somewhat, but it immediately grew back, almost as if it were _alive_…"

Syr shuddered, feeling his throat go dry. "Living" ice needed no further explanation—he could already imagine the sort of creatures that could be responsible for such things, could all too easily picture their hellishly glowing eyes, their massive teeth…

Nonetheless, he tried to brace himself as well as he could for what he might have to face within the building. _You're doing this for Esaax,_ he reminded himself.

The arbok studied the door for a moment. "I think I can help you get in," he said. He motioned Ntairow out of the way, then spat a dark spray of full-strength acid at the doors. The attack caused the metal of the barrier to soften and deform slightly, as well as to give off harsh, stinking fumes, but the poison-type technique failed to burn its way completely through the doors.

"I'm sorry," Syr said. "It normally burns right through…"

"You've actually weakened the metal quite well," said Ntairow. "I could certainly tear it open now were it not for what the lingering acid would likely do to my hands in the process."

"The acid won't bother me." That was all the warning that Karo gave before plowing into the doors. His large nose punched right through the softened metal, and the rest of him followed.

The others entered after him, careful to avoid the sharp, torn, acid-coated edges of their makeshift entrance. Once they were all in, Ntairow managed an impressed smile at Syr and Karo. "Great job, both of you," she said. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Syr and Karo said, almost in unison.

As the three of them began making their way into the building, Karo turned back briefly to look at the hole that he and his nose had just helped to create. "Wow, that's even bigger than the last one," he remarked. "Awesome."

- o -

Purposefully, Moriel made her way through the corridors of the Hope Institute. The glalie kept a mindfully quick pace as she moved; she had a fairly important task to carry out.

Their employer was apparently not quite the good guy that he'd made himself out to be. Solonn had told Moriel, as well as the rest of the glalie and the claydol who lived among them, that DeLeo had tricked one of his clients into evolving and that this was against the law in Convergence. As such, someone needed to go and alert the authorities of this transgression, as well as to contact the staff at the Haven so that they could come to the aid of the victim.

Moriel had readily volunteered to take care of this matter. Having once been in league with their enemies, she still wasn't entirely certain that she had gained the full trust of all of the other glalie with whom she now associated, even after having fought alongside them. Any help that she could provide for any of them was an opportunity that she gladly seized.

As she navigated the winding halls of the building, she found herself feeling grateful that she'd been working there for as long as she had. The Hope Institute's internal layout could be a bit confusing for newcomers, but by that point, Moriel had memorized it fairly well. It also helped that the building was presently closed; it was easier to focus on where she was supposed to be going with the building being largely empty.

Then she rounded a corner into a rather large room and found that the Hope Institute wasn't quite so empty as she'd thought it was.

Moriel had stumbled upon Ntairow, Karo, and Syr. The former two looked upon her with largely unreadable expressions, but the arbok looked distinctly and increasingly afraid, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide.

"Whoa, hey!" Moriel exclaimed. "Who are you, and wh—"

She was cut off as first a terrified shout and then a spray of acid escaped the arbok in a moment's panic. Moriel shrieked in pain as the burning fluid struck her face, and she retaliated immediately and automatically: in an instant, the room was filled with a small army of illusory glalie, and at the same time, three loud cracks rang out in rapid succession.

All three of the sheer cold strikes hit their targets, but only Syr was affected. As he dropped to the floor, unconscious, the swarm of glalie began rushing about in circles around Ntairow and Syr—_independently_, at varying speeds, with some moving clockwise and others moving counterclockwise.

Then Moriel and her illusory copies all turned inward toward their targets for just long enough to fire ice beams in unison, sending jagged, bright blue bolts of ice-type energy flying in a crisscrossing web around Ntairow, Karo, and the insensible arbok at their feet. Most of them passed inconsequentially through or around the nosepass and the kwazai, but one of them—the real one—struck Karo on the left side of the head, causing him to swear explosively and stagger.

A pale bluish-purple light filled Ntairow's eyes as she tapped into the source of her psywave technique. The branches of her tail were fanned out and moving around independently, their oculons trying to pick out the telltales that would distinguish the real, living glalie from the nonliving copies, but something about the glalie was confounding her psychic senses. Unable to pick out her target directly, Ntairow instead went into a spin on one foot, firing a quick volley of psywaves in a circle around her—but succeeding only in causing three illusory glalie to vanish before a protect aura went up around the remaining copies and their maker, foiling the rest of the psychic strikes.

Another web of ice beams was fired from the swarm then, hitting Karo once again—Ntairow scowled, wishing that she'd been able to tell from which direction the real ice beam had come so that she could have dived in front of it. Using the glalie's attacks to fuel mirror coat responses—and ultimately to fuel a devastating anguish attack once the kwazai had taken enough of them—seemed to Ntairow like the best hope for taking her out at this point. Psywaves were much slower, much easier to avoid than the instantaneous reactions that her retaliatory attacks were, and for all the help that Karo was providing in the fight, he might as well have been in the same state as Syr presently was.

"Why aren't you doing anything?" Ntairow demanded of the nosepass.

"I'm trying!" Karo insisted, and he was indeed trying. The trouble was that he had a very limited selection of techniques to bring to bear against their adversary, the consequence of his trainer having decided to limit the number of attacks that he could learn to a mere four out of a sense that it would make Karo hone those four to a greater potency than usual and learn to use them more creatively.

Karo might not have minded this so much at the present moment if one of the moves that he'd been left with had been a nice rock-type attack, preferably one that would simply drop rocks on all of the glalie at once and thereby perhaps weaken the real one enough to render her incapable of keeping up her double team illusions, at least. His zap cannon technique was terribly difficult to aim and terribly easy to dodge, and being unable to pick out his actual target in the first place meant that he couldn't use lock-on to overcome those drawbacks.

The only hope that he could see lay in his remaining two techniques, one of which he was presently bringing to bear not against the glalie but rather against Ntairow, Syr, and himself. Specifically, he was trying to the best of his ability to impose a block field around all three of them. Blocking more than one target at the same time was never easy, and the pain from the ice-type strikes that he'd already suffered was not helping matters.

But then he saw Ntairow go completely rigid, halted right in the middle of unleashing another series of psywaves, taking on a look of alarm. Satisfied as he could be under the circumstances that the field was secure around its targets, Karo focused on intensifying it so that it would not only prevent anything from breaking out of it but also prevent anything from breaking _into_ it.

A third ice beam was fired Karo's way—only to dissipate harmlessly against the force field that he had summoned. Karo felt a spark of pride burst into being within him—he'd succeeded. With a faint sense of relief, he let the block field withdraw from him, leaving it clinging to Ntairow and Syr as he unleashed the last of his four techniques.

All at once, the space was filled with blazing light and thunderous noise.


	16. Balance

**Chapter 16 – Balance**

Syr awoke to a rather different scene from what he had last seen. From where he was presently lying, he now had a sideways view of shattered floor tiles illuminated by scattered moonlight, as well as of an irregular hole in the wall through which he could see Ntairow leaning partway.

There was also a sound in the air that hadn't been there before: a very faint moaning in an unfamiliar voice. Syr's brows drew together in puzzlement as he pulled himself up from the floor; a bit of a daze still lingered in the wake of his unconsciousness, making it hard at the moment for him to guess to whom the voice belonged.

He made his way over to Ntairow to see if she had any clue what the source of the voice was. The sound grew louder as he approached her, though its volume still remained very low. Once he was by her side, he found out exactly whom he was hearing without having to voice his question after all, and the answer snapped him back to full awareness in an instant.

Just on the other side of the ruined wall lay a glalie; Syr could only assume that this was the same one who had knocked him out. Even in her current state—her right horn missing its tip, her ice armor broken off in places, and a pool of nearly colorless blood trying to form around her but hampered a bit by the fact that it was slowly turning to pale mist as it left her body—her presence made him distinctly uncomfortable. His breaths began escaping in worried hisses, and he found himself moving back away from the broken wall without really having decided to do so.

Syr shifted his gaze to Ntairow and held it there, the glalie now entirely out of his sight. In the corner of his vision, he noticed a bluish-purple light glowing briefly through the hole in the wall. When it subsided, so did the moaning.

The arbok moved ever so slightly closer to Ntairow once more as she ducked back out of the hole in the wall. "Did you…?"

"She's alive," Ntairow said, which didn't answer the question that Syr had actually had in mind. "But she won't be giving us any trouble again anytime soon," she then said, which did answer it. "You have nothing to fear from her now. Although I have to say that you undoubtedly scared her every bit as much as she scared you."

"Yes, well…" Syr began irritably, doubting Ntairow's claim. Then he noticed the gray-and-orange shape lying several feet away from Ntairow, back in the direction from whence they'd come. "Karo!" he shouted concernedly. He rushed over to him, ignoring the way that the broken floor and scattered debris scraped and dug into his belly as he did so—but he stopped in his tracks when he got close enough to see just what sort of condition his friend was in at the moment.

He was looking at roughly half of a nosepass.

"Oh God…" Syr whispered.

"It's all right," Ntairow assured him. "He's still alive, and he has already begun to repair himself."

Syr just stared for a moment at what was left of Karo, his horror giving way to a strange sort of awe. "He wasn't kidding…" he said, more to himself than anyone else. Karo had once bragged to Syr that nosepass lived indefinitely if no one or nothing else could kill them and that killing them wasn't easy. The nosepass had said that even if he were smashed to pieces, he would just regenerate. Syr had always just always figured that he must have been exaggerating.

"He said it's a very slow process, though. Regenerating, I mean," Syr said, then sighed. "He needs to go to the Haven. They can speed up his repairs with their revives and potions there. Otherwise… God, from the look of him, he probably won't see the next hundred years. At least."

"He's perfectly stable for the time being," Ntairow told him. "The same can't be said for Esaax." And with that, she turned away from the broken wall and the glalie beyond it and set off in search of Esaax once more.

Syr didn't start following her right away. Leaving the glalie behind struck him as a very good idea, but leaving Karo behind did not, no matter how indestructible the nosepass claimed himself to be. Syr took a moment to wrap his tail securely around Karo, then proceeded onward after Ntairow, now noticing and dodging every bit of debris in his path while trying not to think too hard about just what the source of some of it was.

But not thinking about this was difficult for him, especially since, in addition to the fact that he was presently pulling the weight of the pokémon to whom some of the debris had formerly belonged, he was still furthermore not altogether certain of just what had left Karo in such a state in the first place. "What did this to him, anyway?" he asked.

A couple of Ntairow's tail branches curled toward Syr. She stopped and turned around, then gave a sigh and closed the distance between her and the arbok; dragging Karo along had prevented Syr from catching up to her.

"He used an explosion," Ntairow answered him as she went over to take hold of Karo. She saw a look of astonishment overtake Syr's features—the arbok had craned his neck to watch what she had been doing—and gave him a nod that silently said, _It's true_, as well as a forward wave of one hand that silently said, _Now let's move along, please._

Syr followed her unspoken directions, able to move somewhat faster now that Ntairow was helping him carry the unconscious nosepass, still in disbelief at what he'd just been told. "God… what possessed him to resort to _that_?" he asked as they left the room for the corridor beyond.

"That glalie seemed to have a particular talent for using double team," Ntairow said. "There were just too many copies, and they were indistinguishable from their maker. He decided to just take them all out at once, I suppose." She smiled very faintly. "I do have to commend him for managing to do that—or to come close, anyway—without taking us out, as well. I'm still not completely sure how he did it."

"I'm not sure either, but wow…" Syr said. _I have _got _to make this up to him someday,_ he thought.

Meanwhile, something else in what Ntairow had said was striking him as a little odd. "…You said that you couldn't tell the real one from the copies, right?" he asked her.

"Yes, that's right. I think her dark subtype may have been overdeveloped; it was deflecting my psychic perception."

"Oh," Syr said at first. Then, "Wait, what do you mean, 'subtype'?"

"An elemental factor that's strong enough to have an effect on its owner but not strong enough to figure into their actual type. All pokémon have—"

She fell abruptly silent, and Syr didn't wonder why—he could see the reason for himself. It was another glalie encounter, but this time there were four of them, all of whom looked at least somewhat alarmed. On top of that, Solonn was one of those four; Syr immediately wished that he had been able to go through life without learning that glalie could get that large. There was also a claydol in the glalie's midst, to whom Syr gave almost no real attention; the arbok was aware of almost nothing beyond the glowing blue eyes that were quickly approaching and the frantic pounding of his own heart.

Distantly, he felt the weight that he was helping to carry sink to the ground, then saw Ntairow move into his peripheral vision. "Stay put," she hissed as she swiftly made her way around to stand beside him, "and try to stay calm. _Please_."

Syr gave neither a word nor a motion in response. Her words had managed to get through to him over the din of instincts and memories that were clamoring for him to attack or flee or do _something_, but while he was managing to keep stock still for the time being, he didn't trust himself not to break at any moment.

"What are you people doing here?" one of the glalie demanded as he and the rest of his group came to a stop a few feet away from Ntairow, Syr, and Karo. He shifted slightly to look past Syr, his eyes finding the partially-destroyed nosepass who was still being held in Syr's coils. "Actually, never mind that. I think we've already got our answer," he said, nodding toward the unconscious rock-type.

"You were responsible for that explosion?" Solonn asked of Ntairow and Syr.

"Yes," Ntairow began to answer evenly, at which Syr immediately threw her a sanity-questioning look, "but we hadn't intended to. It was all just a misunderstanding. We ran into one of your people unexpectedly; he—" She gestured toward Syr. "—attacked her out of panic; and things just sort of escalated, unfortunately. Don't worry—she's still alive, although she does need to get some medical attention soon."

The glalie who had spoken first swore at this, and all of the glowing blue eyes that regarded the intruders widened. "Where is she?" he demanded.

Ntairow pointed back toward the room off behind her. Two of the glalie rushed off in that direction at once, as did the claydol. "You will need to come along with us," said one of the remaining glalie, at which Ntairow nodded and gave Syr a nudge, then went back to help carry Karo once more.

Syr felt a tug on the end of his tail, a signal from Ntairow that he needed to get moving. He was anything but enthusiastic about spending more time in the company of that many glalie, but the notion of offending them further by disobeying them scared him even more. Still, it was with considerable reluctance that he turned around and headed back into the explosion-damaged room, feeling his body trying to fight him the entire way there.

As he and Ntairow carried Karo into the room, with two of the glalie following them, the two who had gone in ahead of them turned to regard them from the spot by the broken wall where they and the claydol hovered. One of them stayed there with Moriel, while Solonn and the claydol approached the intruders. One of the glalie who had just come in moved forward past Solonn and the claydol, pausing very briefly to get a quick assessment of Moriel's condition before heading off toward an exit.

"Why did you come here?" Solonn asked of Ntairow and Syr, his tone heavy.

"Because someone here desperately needs help," Ntairow said. "I don't know if you're aware of this, but there's a pokémon here who's been forced to evolve. He's elementally unstable—he needs a psychic-type of his own kind to serve as a vessel for his excess darkness. Please… you've got to give me a chance to try and balance him out. He won't survive otherwise."

"Do you mean Esaax?" Solonn asked her.

"Yes, I do. You've got to let me see him," Ntairow said urgently.

"She could still be lying," the glalie over by the broken wall pointed out.

Solonn sent him a brief glance, then sighed and turned his gaze back toward Ntairow. "Would you consent to a psychic scan in order to prove that you're telling the truth?"

Ntairow didn't quite bother to keep herself from scowling. "Will it be quick?"

_-Yes,-_ the claydol assured her, speaking telepathically while what Syr could only assume was their actual voice rattled on incomprehensibly alongside their silent words, _-and it will be painless.-_

"Fine, then," Ntairow said.

Without hesitation, the claydol moved to hover right in front of her, lowered their head, and closed all but the foremost of their eyes. Soon afterward, _-She is completely truthful in her claims,-_ the claydol confirmed.

"All right, then," Solonn said quietly. "If you'll follow me, I'll take you to where Esaax is being kept." He made his way back toward the hallway through which Ntairow, Syr, and Karo had tried to pass before. "I hope for his sake that you succeed in saving him," he said as first Ntairow and Syr—carrying Karo once more—followed him out of the room and then one of the other glalie did likewise. "He's already been through enough that he didn't deserve."

"I hope I succeed, too," Ntairow said quietly. Syr, still too uncomfortable in the presence of the glalie to speak, only nodded in agreement.

- o -

Not very far away from his would-be savior, Esaax stirred in his containment field, his eyes widening. Two words, nearly voiceless, escaped on a breath exhaled as if he'd been holding it all his life.

"_She's here_…"


	17. Lifeforce

**Chapter 17 – Lifeforce**

It was like resurrection.

His spirit rose up from the depths of the nothingness that had been occupying him. His voice rose, as well, in a crescendo that kept growing with each repetition of the truth that had brought him back to his senses:

"She's here! _She's here_!"

_She_ was here. Even after all these years, to his great surprise and even greater delight, she still remembered him… and, he hoped, still loved him. And at long last, she was returning to his life. Any moment now, she might arrive in the room where he was being held, rescue him, and take him back into her embrace…

**You fool.**

The hollow voice droned from deep within his mind. Its strength and the way that it addressed Esaax so directly, completely unbidden, made its true nature horribly clear to Esaax. The cold and empty voice that had just spoken to him represented none other than the warped and malignant darkness residing within himself. That darkness was no longer merely a part of him—they had become a separate entity lurking within him, a parasite trying to take his life for their own.

**Your senses lie. Your joy is an illusion.**

_That's not true!_ Esaax argued internally. He felt and recognized the distinct psychic signature of Ntairow's presence and could not deny that he did. _What_ that signature represented had changed, but _who_ it signified was unmistakable to his senses and memory.

**You delude yourself. You will not have her.**

_You're wrong!_ Esaax said, silently and firmly. _She's here for me—_

—**But she will not stay. She abandoned you before, and will only abandon you again. Forget her.**

"No!" Esaax shouted, speaking aloud now. "She'll be here soon, and we _will_ have each other again. She's gonna save me!"

**No one will save you. Nothing is left for you. Forget her. Forget yourself.**

"_No_! You're _wrong_!" Esaax shouted, fighting to defy and destroy the darkness through sheer force of will.

But the living darkness would not be denied. They literally rose to his surface, to visibility, manifesting in thin streaks of black energy that snaked over his skin like dark vines. The streaks crept out over his entire body and then merged together, leaving every square inch of his skin emitting the black glow of the parasitic darkness.

**I am this body now, not you,** they said. **Your time is long past over. Give up.**

"No, I refuse to!"

The darkness erupted into a seething, black aura around Esaax. _**Give up**_**,** they pressed.

"_I REFUSE_!"

As the kwazai's defiant roar faded, the darkness found themself possessed of a cold, absolute hatred, a feeling stronger than anything that they had felt in their hours-long existence. In the face of what seemed to him like a real hope for salvation, Esaax had become too strong to simply erase—this would not do, the darkness determined at once with a vicious resolve.

**There will be **_**no**_** hope, **_**no**_** strength, **_**no**_** life for you,** they declared hatefully. **I will make you accept this. I will make you **_**pray**_** for oblivion!**

The darkness unleashed a massive, hollow roar within Esaax's mind. They seemed to retreat back into the corners of Esaax's mind from whence they had come, the dark aura vanishing and revealing his blue skin once more—but then the darkness sent a bolt of their power shooting down Esaax's spine, dealing grievous damage to his pseudobrain before seeming to explode in a burst of pain within the end of his tail, temporarily distorting the perception of his oculons.

A split-second later, there was a bright, orange flash, and Esaax was shocked out of breath and onto his knees.

- o -

As Syr slithered along behind Solonn, trying very hard but with scant success not to think about just what he was following, he felt something pull sharply on his tail and heard a loud _thud_. He looked back and saw that Ntairow had dropped Karo and gone totally rigid.

"What is it?" Syr asked.

"Esaax," Ntairow said, pain and fear both present in her tone. "He's returned to my perception—and he's in pain…"

"_What_? How bad is it?" Syr demanded worriedly.

"It's horrible… Dear Night, it's like his own body is rejecting him…"

"We're almost there," Solonn tried to assure her from where he now hovered in place, but his tone and the look on his face suggested that he had become fairly worried himself.

His assurance seemed to be unnecessary, however—no sooner had he spoken than Ntairow rushed out in front of him, staggering slightly and clutching her head in pain but still managing to move fairly quickly, apparently using her now fully restored perception of Esaax to guide her.

Now that Ntairow was no longer helping him carry Karo, Syr couldn't hope to keep up with her. Still, he opted to try, not wanting at all to be left behind with the glalie—but before he could move an inch, he felt something lift the nosepass in his grip off of the ground. He turned and saw Karo being swiftly elevated on a pillar of ice, which then deposited him on top of the head of the glalie behind him, with the end of Syr's tail still wrapped around the unconscious nosepass.

With most of his body now off of the ground, Syr was forced to either try to convince the glalie to put Karo back down or else release his own hold on him. The former very quickly ceased to feel like an option, however; the glalie simply intimidated him too much for him to find it within himself to challenge what she had done… and besides which, underneath it all, he did recognize that she was sincerely trying to help, and as much as he would have preferred not to need the help of her or any others of her kind, he fell short of ingratitude.

"…Thanks," he managed, his voice coming out as little more than a squeak.

"No problem," the glalie said, securing the nosepass to her head with ice as she spoke, and then she took off after Solonn and Ntairow. Syr hastened to follow her, still not altogether comfortable with the notion of leaving Karo unsupervised with one of _them_ and spurred on further still by the sound of Ntairow screaming.

Soon, they caught up with Ntairow and Solonn, who had just halted before a large pair of metal doors, the former leaning against the latter. Ntairow was silent now but grimacing in pain, one hand still holding her head.

Once everyone had come to a stop there, "This is Sylvester DeLeo, requesting entry," Solonn said, at which Syr's eyes widened in surprise—not because of what the glalie had said but how he'd said it. He'd sounded nothing like he had before; the voice that he'd just used was quite a bit higher. But what really caught Syr's attention was that Solonn had spoken in a human language there—some corner of his mind fleetingly wondered if he were just mimicking the words or if, like someone whom Syr had known so many years ago, this glalie actually spoke the language fluently.

"_Voice recognition confirmed,"_ said a computerized voice from an unseen source. "_Please state password."_

"Password," Solonn responded, still using the higher voice and the human language.

"_Password valid,"_ said the computerized voice. "_Access granted."_

The doors slid open, and with the unconscious nosepass in tow, the four entered a room of moderate size that was more brightly lit than the rest of the Hope Institute. The scene now surrounding them was like a gallery of pre- and post-Extinction high technology.

And in the center of it all was Esaax, slumped in his containment field. He was all too plainly suffering, panting and groaning with his tail lashing and his hands gripping his head.

Ntairow rushed to him at once, pressing all four of her hands against the wall of energy as tears streamed from her widened eyes. The need to help this creature whose agony she shared burned within her, made all the more urgent and painful by the fact that this was the suffering of someone whom she loved. Right before her eyes, not to mention her more potent senses, Esaax was heading toward a highly volatile state. He direly needed her… but she could not get to him.

"How do you get him out of this thing?" she demanded.

"Over here!" Solonn called, and he led Ntairow over to a control panel.

"I don't know how to use this!" Ntairow told him.

"It's all right; I do. Just do exactly as I tell you, and we'll have him right out in no time," Solonn said.

Syr very briefly watched Ntairow and Solonn work to free Esaax, hoping that they would indeed do so as quickly as Solonn had claimed that they would. He then returned his gaze to Esaax with difficulty, swallowing against a lump in his throat. "You're… you're going to be all right," he told Esaax as consolingly as he could manage, beginning to move closer to the kwazai as he spoke.

Esaax shook his head and raised a hand as if in warning, at which Syr halted. The kwazai's jaws parted as though he were about to say something, but his voice was cut off before it could even form a single word when a burst of searing, orange light suddenly blazed into being around him. He then cried out yet again as a enormous spasm tore through his body.

At that same instant, Ntairow convulsed likewise, echoing Esaax's scream in her empathy. She staggered, and Solonn moved quickly to break her fall.

"Dear Holy Night, he's tearing himself apart!" Ntairow cried.

"You're almost finished!" Solonn assured her.

Sure enough, the containment field soon vanished with a faint humming sound. Ntairow ran back to Esaax, dropping into something like a kneeling position and throwing all of her arms around him upon reaching him, crying against his chest as she embraced the newly-freed kwazai tightly.

Esaax lowered his forehead against hers and held it there as steadily as it could given that he was now shaking uncontrollably, his own tears sliding swiftly down his muzzle and falling to the floor. "Ntairow…" he said, his voice hoarse and quavering. "I'm—" He broke off briefly, giving another pained groan, at which Ntairow embraced him even tighter. "I'm glad you're here. I'd… given up on us ever finding each other again," he admitted, closing his eyes in shame.

"I should have found you sooner…" Ntairow lamented in a pained voice that barely exceeded a whisper. "Dear Night, look at you… you're so broken…" Esaax had gone into autoempathic crisis, she knew. That was something that she couldn't repair—it was something that no one could repair until he was elementally stabilized. He just had so terribly little time…

"I don't think you can fix me now," Esaax said quietly. "I'm… I'm not gonna make it."

"No," Ntairow said fiercely, resolutely. "You _will_ survive this… and your son will finally get to know the father he's been missing all these years."

Esaax just stared at Ntairow for a moment with eyes filled with disbelief and wonder. Then a smile spread along his muzzle in spite of his pain. "…You're serious?"

Ntairow nodded. "He is called Zerzekai. And unless I am mistaken, he has just begun his life as a wobbuffet," she informed Esaax proudly.

Esaax managed a faint but joyous laugh, then wrapped his arms around Ntairow, squeezing her as hard as his now rapidly-waning strength would allow.

Though Esaax's body was growing steadily weaker, his spirit seemed to have grown stronger than Ntairow suspected it to have been all night. That, she knew, made this an especially good time to try and help him shed his excess darkness. Concentrating deeply, she tapped into her psychic element, aggravating and intensifying its susceptibility to psybane in the hopes of drawing the darkness in like a gravitational force.

Immediately, however, she found that something wasn't right. Esaax had a massive surplus of dark energy, one that seemed to be growing by the second, but the excess of elemental power was not responding correctly. Instead of spilling over into the receptive psychic who opened her element so readily, the darkness remained stubbornly in place, continuing to build up inside of Esaax.

Then the darkness chose to respond in their own way.

With absolutely no warning, a black aura flared around Esaax. In virtually the same instant, under the control of the darkness, Esaax roared in a voice as vast and hollow as the depths of space and fired a reflux of unnaturally great speed and power at Ntairow, striking her with devastating force. Her aura immediately flashed bright pink in an autonomic and futile mirror coat response as she collapsed from the augmented strike, scattered black patches forming on her skin as she hit the ground.

The recoil from the overcharged reflux blast was enormous and instantaneous, and as it struck Esaax, he was simultaneously assaulted from within by a massive autoempathic shock. The dark aura that surrounded Esaax then suddenly tore free and took to the air with a hollow-sounding howl, which allowed an erratically-flashing, orange counter aura to show around the now screaming kwazai whom the darkness had left behind.

An ice beam and a volley of poison sting needles flew forth in an attempt to arrest the shadow's flight, while the sharp sound of a sheer cold attack that was fired off with the same intent rang out at the same time. The disembodied darkness evaded all of the attacks effortlessly as they rushed swiftly through the air, destroying equipment and killing the lights as they swept in a circle around the room. They then smashed into the wall and burned a hole through it and the walls beyond it to the outside, where they seemed to dissipate and vanish completely.

With the shroud of living darkness now lifted from him, Esaax was left as a regular, ruined kwazai. A final few sparks of orange energy flashed around him, and then the autoempathic attack ceased. Esaax then toppled over onto his side, panting arrhythmically, blood now flowing freely from his eyes and mouth.

As if in slow motion, Syr was only just beginning to feel the tears escaping his eyes as he stared at the two kwazai before him. "…Esaax?" he spoke up tentatively, his voice barely able to come to his summons. He heard Solonn say something in the background about checking to see if the paramedics had arrived yet, but the words didn't quite register in Syr's brain as they ordinarily might have; all that he could really focus on was the sight of Esaax before him, who gave not a single word in response. "Esaax!" Syr cried out, fearing the worst.

There was a slight movement before Syr's eyes. Esaax raised his head, albeit only barely. Syr called out to him again, but Esaax seemed not to notice, and the arbok was sure at once as to why.

Esaax's gaze had found Ntairow, at the sight of whom he gave a very faint, pained sound. With an immense effort, he rolled onto his belly and pulled himself up to lie beside her. As he lifted a shaking hand and extended it toward Ntairow, he prayed that he had lifeforce enough for what he intended to do.

Esaax laid his hand upon Ntairow's greater right arm, upon a patch of skin that hadn't been scorched by the dark attack. A soft, multicolored glow surrounded him, then spread from the point where his hand rested upon her until it radiated from every square inch of her skin, as well.

Syr stared at him with fear, his breath hitching in his chest. He felt a strong urge to rush over to Esaax and stop him—especially since the arbok knew that if Esaax succeeded in what he was doing, he would be giving up some of his lifeforce, and Syr was all too sure that the kwazai had terribly little left to spare.

Before Syr could even begin to act on that urge, however, the light surrounding the two kwazai suddenly grew to such an intensity that he found himself recoiling from it involuntarily, his eyes shutting tight. Unseen by any in attendance, the shared aura swelled into a small, bright dome around Esaax and Ntairow as the lifeforce of the former flowed into the latter. The aura then burst into a cloud of tiny, colorful sparks, which fell in a brief, luminous shower over the two kwazai.

As the last sparks fell, Esaax looked down upon Ntairow, who was now fully restored. He smiled gently and kissed her forehead. Then he lay down next to her and quietly exhaled his last breath.

Ntairow drew a sudden, sharp breath, awake in an instant. She sat up abruptly, then immediately rolled over onto her hands and folded legs, her shoulders heaving as she coughed and sputtered uncontrollably.

Once her body relaxed, she began looking about frantically in confusion. Her eyes fell upon Esaax, who was surrounded now by no colors other than the deep blue of his own shed blood. She knew instantly what had just transpired.

Her cry of sorrow rang out for a very, very long moment.

Meanwhile, Syr could only stare at the scene before him at first. He began to draw slowly closer to the two kwazai as Ntairow's cry faded out, still dragging Karo behind him. He finally reached them, and for a moment he just looked down at Esaax through blurred vision. Then he turned his sights toward Ntairow, seeing her burying her face in two of her hands while the other two cradled Esaax's head, her whole body shaking as she wept for the lifeless kwazai.

Without really thinking, Syr released his hold on Karo and draped the end of his tail across Ntairow's shoulders. She turned to face him, and at first she looked as though she wanted to tell him to go away… but then that expression faded, and she only looked weary and broken. Her head sank, and she extended an arm to embrace Syr, and as the minutes passed, the two of them mourned Esaax without a single word.

- o -

From the backseats, Syr watched street sign after street sign go by, the distance between him and the cemetery closing fast. As many times as he'd gone there since the burial, it still felt strange, far from routine.

Doing nothing at all to help things seem less surreal to Syr were the things that he had learned about one of the ones who had been responsible for Esaax's evolution, specifically Sylvester DeLeo. DeLeo was currently being tried for his crimes against the former wobbuffet alone since the one whom he had claimed to have worked toward bringing about Esaax's evolution with had yet to be found and the strange, dark entity that had detached themself from Esaax had not been seen since they had escaped from the Hope Institute.

DeLeo's fate had yet to be decided, and under different circumstances, Syr would have simply hoped for him to just be locked away for a good long while. But upon having seen that mechanized human disguise open up and having recognized the meowth within it… Between the genuine pity that he'd felt for DeLeo upon learning why he had made Esaax evolve and the sickening, heartbreaking recognition that DeLeo had betrayed someone who had been one of the meowth's best friends, Syr hadn't been and still wasn't altogether sure of what he wanted to befall DeLeo. All that Syr knew for certain regarding that whole matter was that he might never be able to bring himself to speak to that meowth again.

There was, at least, one of his friends who had taken a turn for the better in recent times. Karo had recovered in the wake of his explosion, having been given ample encouragement to heal by the staff at the Haven; he was staying awake once more, with the pain of his injuries now gone altogether. Syr had furthermore been informed that the glalie who had also been injured as the result of Karo's attack had survived and was also recovering nicely.

Syr had tried for the most part to focus on the things that were going well. More than ever, he felt an obligation to show strength for Jen's sake, especially with the Hope Institute still closed at that time and the fact that Jen had not reacted well to the news of what DeLeo had done there.

Still, Syr neither could nor truly wanted to pretend the recent sorrows away, even though sometimes he wasn't able to give audience to those matters without letting it show. He continued to pay visits to the graves of his fallen friends even though it still tended to result in him returning to the car visibly upset.

The convertible reached its destination, and Syr exited the vehicle, with Jen staying behind as usual. In silence, the arbok crossed the field and soon reached the place where Esaax had been laid to rest.

Syr coiled there, drawing a deep breath as he looked down upon the plaque before him. There were three names engraved there in unown-script; in addition to marking Esaax's grave, the plaque also memorialized Faurur and Drasigon, at Syr's request. This way, he had reckoned, the family could be together again in this way, at least, if no other.

Not long after he had arrived at the grave site, he noticed footsteps approaching. Turning toward their source, he found Ntairow standing a short distance away with an unfamiliar wobbuffet at her side.

Ntairow and the wobbuffet had stopped in their tracks the moment that Syr had looked up at them, and the former now looked as though she had decided to leave and come back another time, laying a hand upon the wobbuffet's shoulder as if to shepherd him off and beginning to turn away herself.

"No, it's all right," Syr called out to them. "You don't have to go… Come on over if you'd like."

The other two pokémon hesitated to take him up on his offer, but only very briefly. Soon, they were both standing at the arbok's side. Syr moved aside a bit in order to give them a better view of the grave. Almost as soon as he did, Ntairow knelt down before the grave, then extended and opened a hand over it, allowing a small, gray stone to fall onto the grass before her. As Ntairow stood once more, the wobbuffet placed a stone upon the grave, as well.

_So _that's _where they've been coming from,_ Syr thought, having found similar gray rocks lying upon the grave on some of his previous visits. He had considered clearing them away on a couple of those occasions and was now glad that he hadn't done so.

Syr was curious about the ritual that he'd just witnessed, but he felt somewhat less than comfortable somehow asking about it and decided instead to ask another of the questions that had formed in his mind upon the arrival of the other two visitors to this grave on this day.

"Is he…?" he spoke up, nodding toward the wobbuffet, letting the question hang.

"Yes," Ntairow said, "this is Zerzekai, my son and Esaax's. Zerzekai, this is… I'm sorry, I never did get your name."

"Syr," the arbok supplied. "I'm Syr."

Ntairow nodded in acknowledgment. "Syr was one of your father's friends," she told Zerzekai. Her gaze then shifted back to Syr. "…I would like to thank you for that," she said to him. "For being there for him when and where you could. I could tell during our time together that you genuinely did care about him and wanted him to be well."

Syr lowered his head, averting his gaze slightly as he felt tears beginning to sting his eyes. "Yeah," he said solemnly. "Yeah, I did." _And… and I still do,_ he added silently, and he meant it. He didn't know for certain what lay beyond life, if anything… but he hoped that somewhere, in some way, Esaax and everyone else whom he'd ever cared for and lost were happy and well, with all their troubles left behind forever.

It didn't quite ease the pain completely, didn't quite stop him altogether from wishing that they were still with him. But it was some comfort, at least, however small, and as the minutes passed in silence, he hoped that the two who stood sharing those minutes with him had found or would find at least some small comfort of their own.

**FIN **


End file.
